Posted on 04/28/2006 5:16:16 AM PDT by Neville72
Blocking a aberrant protein could keep cells pert and young.
What makes us age? Researchers think cell nuclei may hold part of the answer.
In the continued quest to pinpoint the molecules that turn us wrinkly and grey, some scientists are beginning to think that the walls of the cell nucleus might play an important role.
A new study shows that cells from people over the age of 80 tend to have specific problems with the nucleus that young children's cells do not. The elderly nucleus loses its pert, rounded shape and becomes warped and wrinkled.
The discovery supports the up and coming idea that at least part of the normal ageing process may be driven by the nucleus' decay, and that blocking this might curb some of time's toll upon the body. "If this really has a physiological role in normal elderly people then it's a huge deal," says David Sinclair who studies the molecular mechanisms of ageing at Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Old before our time
Researchers have found many different genes that can alter the lifespan of animals. In addition, some environmental factors, from the amount of food we eat to the number of cigarettes we smoke, are thought to contribute to the speed at which we age. But there is no consensus yet on how, exactly, these things combine to make our cells and bodies start to fail.
One widely held idea is that cells accumulate wear and tear over a lifetime from damaging molecules known as reactive oxygen species. Some researchers have focused on problems with the power-generating components of cells, called mitochondria. And others have looked at how the ends of chromosomes, called telomeres, fray as we get older.
To gain insight into human ageing, in recent years some biologists have focused their attention on a group of diseases known as progerias, in which children can suffer baldness, heart disease and other symptoms of premature ageing.
In 2003, scientists showed that one such rare disorder, called Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome (HGPS), is caused by a mutation that affects the lamin A protein, a building block of the nucleus and its wall. Now Tom Misteli and Paola Scaffidi at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, have shown that elderly people tend to have the same problem with their cell nuclei, suggesting that this protein is important in the normal ageing process.
Turning back the clock
In cells taken from the elderly, the nuclei tend to be wrinkled up, the DNA accumulates damage, and the levels of some proteins that package up DNA go askew, the team reports in Science1. This mirrors the same changes that they previously observed in cells from HGPS children.
The team suggests that healthy cells always make a trace amount of an aberrant form of lamin A protein, but that young cells can sense and eliminate it. Elderly cells, it seems, cannot.
Critically, blocking production of this deviant protein corrected all the problems with the nucleus. "You can take these old cells and make them young again," Misteli says.
This suggests that drugs that do the same thing might slow or stay some symptoms of ageing. This is the next key experiment that needs to be tried in animals, researchers say.
I'll be immortal yet...
The only danger to my long life will be old ladies behind the wheel, and young kids with new driver's licenses.
(And bad seafood.)
This could also prove to have veterinary uses. A lot of people would like to keep their dog or cat for, say, 40 years.
Okay - how do we stop it?
Wrinkled cell nuclei, wrinkled skin. There ya go.
Now, how do we iron out those wrinkled nuclei?
Interesting discovery! Hopefully they can develop a treatment based on this so that aging can be slowed somewhat.
longevity without quality of life is a waste.
This sounds promising in reversing that trend.
So then cats would live for 360 years?
Good point. I'm not sure if treatment of this alone would give such a profound increase in life expectancy like 300% for an animal.
But even if it added a few years and made people's older animals healthier I could see a large market. Plus there isn't the same level of regulations for getting veterinary medicines on the market.
The way things are going, if I had a 150 year lifespan I'm pretty sure I'd be on death row by 98 or so.
Somebody will come up with a special age-defying, moisturizing cream.
Very true.
You can't say He hasn't a sense of humor.
The trick is to get it onto the cell nucleuses.
Remind me of the old joke:
A mother drops in to visit her newlywed daughter.
The mother knocks at the open door, but gets no response.
She then find the daughter in the bedroom, laying in bed without a stitch of clothes on.
"What on earth are you doing?" asks the mother.
"I'm waiting here for my husband in my Suit of Love," says the daughter.
The mother thinks this is terribly romantic and files it away for future use.
Later that night the mother tries the same tactic on her husband. She crawls into bed buck naked and waits for her husband to come upstairs.
"What the Sam Hill are you doing?" asks the husband when he sees her laying there.
"I'm waiting for you in my Suit of Love," says the mother.
"Pfft. Better iron that suit," says the father.
I heard that!
I doubt that we can stop it - God did the tweaking when Adam and Eve proved they did not deserve immortality. We may find evidence that points towards super-long lifespans, but I doubt that He will grant us the knowledge to make all the right tweaks.
Yeah, and that's only the tip of the iceberg, baby. I've noticed that alot of my body parts have done exactly the same thing.
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