Longevity Skill Map

Open the interactive map

An interactive map of the knowledge and practical skills needed for research on healthy life extension. Choose a skill or research direction, explore its prerequisites, and build a learning path from foundational concepts to practical tasks.

The current map contains 278 nodes, 1,053 relationships and 32 expandable containers.

The current application, showing the introductory learning modules and the selected topic's details.

What you can do

Open Info in the top toolbar for a short guide to the map. Its first-visit marker stays visible until you open it.

• Explore longevity research. Navigate biology, quantitative sciences, omics, AI, clinical research, genetic engineering and regenerative medicine in color-coded topic lanes.
• Search for a skill. Search titles, descriptions and research context, including components inside collapsed containers. Selecting a result brings the skill into view.
• Expand broad disciplines. Open containers such as gene therapy, drug discovery, brain rejuvenation or microscopy to explore their component skills.
• Choose a mastery depth. Switch between understanding a topic and working on practical tasks. Each skill includes learning outcomes for both depths and a practical task for assessing readiness.
• Find learning materials. Open courses, textbooks, tutorials and research resources from a skill's detail panel. Materials include chapter or lesson guidance and EN/RU language labels, including Computational Biology of Aging and the AGCT data-analysis school.
• Practice with concrete assignments. At Work on tasks depth, expand an assignment to see its objective, steps, expected deliverable, success criteria and supporting materials. The first 24 assignment blocks cover database evidence, SQL, gene networks, statistics, aging models and omics analysis.
• Inspect dependencies. Click a node to highlight its immediate neighbors at the selected depth and see prerequisites, skills it unlocks, and other applications. Task-only relationships are highlighted only at Work on tasks depth. Hover follows the same depth filter and provides a local preview without dimming the entire graph.
• Lock a learning path. Highlight the complete set of required prerequisites for a target at the chosen depth, then explore only those skills. Required components are revealed automatically; unrelated components stay outside the path.
• Review research maturity. Status markers and evidence notes distinguish foundational knowledge, established mechanisms, preclinical research, clinical platforms and speculative goals.

Follow a learning path

1. Search for a target skill, or start with Introduction to longevity, built around Longevity Zero to One.

2. Choose a depth using the Depth selector:

   Depth	Learning objective
   Understand the topic	Explain the concepts, assumptions and limitations.
   Work on tasks	Apply relevant methods, analyze results and complete a scoped practical task.

3. Select a node and click Lock learning path in its detail panel. Locking keeps the current zoom and the selected node's position on screen.

4. Explore the highlighted skills. The target remains fixed while you inspect prerequisites. Explore required steps lists the path in learning stages and shows the depth needed for each step.

5. Change the depth to recalculate the path for the same target while keeping the current zoom and the inspected node's position on screen. Click Reset path to return to unrestricted navigation. Reset keeps the selected node, its detail panel, the current zoom and the node's position on screen.

A path includes all applicable required prerequisites, not just one shortest chain. Shared skills appear once. Selecting a component requires only the relevant parts of its parent discipline.

Navigate the map

Opening or closing containers, selecting skills, search results, related skills, path steps and keyboard navigation preserve your chosen zoom. Navigation may pan to reveal its target. After the initial fit, only zoom gestures, the toolbar + / −, and Fit graph change the scale.

Control	Action
Drag the background or Shift + scroll	Pan the map
One finger on a phone	Pan; tap a node to open it
Two fingers on a phone	Pinch and move around the midpoint between the fingers
Two-finger trackpad scroll	Pan the map in either direction
Trackpad pinch, mouse wheel, Ctrl + scroll, or toolbar + / −	Zoom around the pointer (toolbar buttons use the viewport center)
Fit graph	Fit the full map or the locked path in view
+ / − on a container	Expand or collapse its components
Hover a connection	Show its source and destination near the pointer
Click a connection	Select its destination, keeping the current zoom
Legend	Explain topic colors, status dots and edge styles
Arrow keys and Enter in search	Select a search result
Tab to the graph, then arrow keys	Browse skills, including offscreen nodes
Enter or Space on the graph	Open the focused skill
+ / − on the focused container	Expand or collapse its components
Escape	Dismiss search suggestions, details or the legend

If your browser misidentifies the scrolling device, select Mouse or Trackpad under Info → Scroll device. Auto is the default and supports switching between devices.

Research coverage

The map connects school-level foundations to molecular and cellular aging, biomarkers, senescence, epigenetic rejuvenation, immune and brain aging, tissue and organ replacement, gene delivery, drug discovery and combination strategies.

It also covers organismal function and healthspan, organ-specific aging, human population studies, adult reproductive aging, extracellular aggregates, sleep, exercise and nutrition research. Reusable methods include applied statistics, epigenomics, cellular-aging measurements, tissue and brain analysis, omics processing and biological-product development.

Extracellular matrix coverage includes mechanobiology, cross-links/AGE, fibrosis and mechanical measurements. The germline rejuvenation container includes oocyte protein-aggregate clearance and the research hypothesis of translating germline proteostasis to somatic cells.

Additional paths cover virology, transposable elements and senescence, gene networks, longevity databases, research data organization and SQL, Bayesian inference, time series, physical models and theories of aging.

For the dependency model and mastery-depth semantics, see the graph documentation.

Run locally

Use Python 3.12 or newer:

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
python app.py

Open http://127.0.0.1:8000.

The service exposes the graph, node details and depth-specific learning paths through a FastAPI API. Interactive API documentation is available at http://127.0.0.1:8000/docs, and the health endpoint is http://127.0.0.1:8000/health.

Rendering and UI development

On phones, search occupies its own full-width row above the controls. Touch gestures preserve the point between the fingers while zooming, and releasing one finger continues panning without changing scale.

The map renders with PixiJS/WebGL, using spatial culling, GPU batches and shared text atlases. Titles, metadata and relationships remain visible at every zoom level. Browsers without WebGL use a Canvas2D fallback.

The compiled UI is included in the repository, so the Python and Docker startup commands above still work without Node.js. After editing renderer sources, install the pinned dependencies and rebuild:

npm ci
npm run build

See rendering design, alternatives and reproducible benchmarks for performance details and browser checks.

Validate and test

With the Python environment activated, run:

python scripts/validate_graph.py
python -m unittest discover -s tests -v

The graph validator checks references, hierarchy, metadata and prerequisite cycles. Application tests cover learning paths, mastery depths and API behavior.

For presentation and interaction tests, also install Node.js and run:

node --test tests/*.test.js