Caffeine doesn’t just wake up your brain—it also has surprising effects inside your cells. It can speed up how cells grow and divide, and even help them live longer in different organisms. Also, it can override the cell’s natural safety checks, which usually pause growth when DNA is damaged.
Earlier research pointed to a protein called Rad3 as the one caffeine blocks to bypass this DNA checkpoint, especially in yeast. Later, scientists thought caffeine might instead be blocking TORC1, a key switch that tells cells when to grow, based on energy and nutrient levels.
Target of Rapamycin Complex 1 (TORC1) is part of a system that has been managing cell growth and stress response for over 500 million years. The twist?
It remains elusive if caffeine blocks TORC1 directly or indirectly, but its influence on this ancient system could explain how it helps cells live longer and respond to stress more effectively.
A new study from Queen Mary University of London shows that caffeine might be doing more than just helping you feel awake.
In tiny yeast cells, often used to study aging, scientists discovered that caffeine taps into a very old energy system that’s also found in humans.
Instead of acting directly on the usual growth control switch (called TOR), caffeine works by turning on AMPK. Think of AMPK as a cell’s fuel gauge; it jumps into action when energy is low and helps the cell adapt.
This study found that caffeine helps flip on AMPK, which may support healthy aging by helping cells manage stress and energy better.
Moderate coffee may reduce heart and metabolic disease risk
In their yeast-based study, researchers uncovered how caffeine dances through the cell’s internal circuits, not just to wake you up, but to tune how your cells grow and survive. Caffeine boosts AMPK, the cell’s ancient energy sensor. This helps cells grow properly, repair damaged DNA, and handle stress better.
It does this by indirectly flipping on proteins like Ssp1, Ssp2, and Amk2, which kick-start the process of cell division (mitosis). The team found that caffeine can team up with other DNA-damaging agents, making cells more sensitive to harm, but interestingly, this happens separately from its effect on cell division.
Despite that twist, caffeine still extends cell lifespan (CLS) through AMPK, suggesting that this energy pathway is key to living longer at the cellular level. And because AMPK is deeply conserved across species, this finding hints at something bigger: targeting AMPK in humans might one day help promote healthy aging and longevity.
Journal Reference
- John-Patrick Alao, Juhi Kumar, Despina Stamataki, and Charalampos Rallis (2025). Dissecting the cell cycle regulation, DNA damage sensitivity, and lifespan effects of caffeine in fission yeast. Microbial Cell 12: 141-156. doi: 10.15698/mic2025.06.852
