Leonard Pershing Guarente (born 1952) is an American biologist best known for his research on life span extension in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, roundworms (Caenorhabditis elegans), and mice.
[4] Leonard Guarente was born and raised in Revere, Massachusetts and was the first person in his family to attend college, when he started his undergraduate work at MIT in 1970.
That same year, David Sinclair joined the Guarente lab, and they developed the hypothesis that caloric restriction slows aging by activation of sirtuins.
This NAD dependence explained how SIR2 could connect diet to physiology and suggested the mechanism by which calorie restriction could extend the lifespan of some organisms.
[19] Guarente wrote an autobiography in 2003 titled Ageless Quest: One Scientist's Search for Genes That Prolong Youth.