Cellular senescence and its impact on the circadian clock

Abstract Ageing is one of the greatest risk factors for chronic non-communicable diseases, and cellular senescence is one of the major causes of ageing and age-related diseases. The persistent presence of senescent cells in late life seems to cause disarray in a tissue-specific manner. Ageing disrupts the circadian clock system, which results in the development of many age-related diseases such as metabolic syndrome, cancer, cardiac diseases and sleep disorders and an increased susceptibility to infections. In this review, we first discuss cellular senescence and some of its basic characteristics and detrimental roles. Then, we discuss a relatively unexplored topic on the link between cellular senescence and the circadian clock and attempt to determine whether cellular senescence could be the underlying factor for circadian clock disruption.