Dr. Coleen Murphy’s fascination with aging sparked, in part, from a big discovery about a little worm. A 1993 Nature paper from Dr. Cynthia Kenyon’s lab showed a mutation of the daf-2 gene doubled the lifespan of the wild type roundworm C. elegans by disrupting its insulin pathway — Murphy went on to find all the targets of this pathway, revealing cellular mechanisms of longevity. That finding has threaded throughout Murphy’s career, leading her to investigate whether aging may not be an inevitable decay, but a process we can regulate.
As the Director of the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics and the James A. Elkins Jr Professor in the Life Sciences at Princeton, Murphy — along with her team at the Murphy Lab — is identifying cellular mechanisms involved in the aging process. That’s led to discoveries including a drug that extended fertility in worms — and could potentially help women maintain egg viability as they age.
Like many in her field, Murphy is more excited about extending someone’s health span — the length of time they remain healthy as they age — rather than simply life span. Her goal? Finding ways to maintain systems once “evolutionary pressure” ends, as she mentioned during a Princeton University Press podcast in 2024. Her lab at Princeton focuses on how to slow the aging process to stave off diseases and delay health issues that emerge as we get older, such as cognitive decline.
As science studies the role drugs like metformin and GLP-1s play in slowing down the aging process, Murphy is a little more cautious — and democratic – about drugs as a first-line choice. First, there’s the nature of their cost: not everyone can afford these interventions. Second, she still believes exercise, sleep, and stress reduction are the best longevity hacks available: they’re free, well-tested — and available to everyone. As she told The Daily Princetonian in 2024, “We really need to be in a situation where we’ve tested things, we know they work, and we know that they’re safe.”
Physical changes are only one part of the aging process, with cognitive shifts another. To that end, Murphy’s team is also fascinated with the mechanisms of cognitive function, studying both C. elegans and mice models, even discovering a mechanism to reverse memory loss in aged mice. Her lab also discovered that worms learn how to avoid a pathogen — and pass that learning transgenerationally.
Murphy’s influence extends far beyond her lab. She is the author of the 2023 book “How We Age: The Science of Longevity,” and her leadership roles include serving as the Director of the Simons Collaboration on Plasticity in the Aging Brain, Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Buck Institute for Aging Research and recognition as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2024. Her honors include two NIH Director’s Pioneer Awards and the Transformative R01 Award and the Glenn Award for Research in Biological Mechanisms of Aging in 2010.
Please join us in warmly welcoming Dr. Murphy to the DOC 2025 Faculty!