aging tagged posts

A new “toolkit” to repair damaged DNA that can lead to aging, cancer and motor neuron disease (MND) has been discovered by scientists at the Universities of Sheffield and Oxford.

Published in Nature Communications, the research shows that a protein called TEX264, together with other enzymes, is able to recognize and “eat” toxic proteins that can stick to DNA and cause it to become damaged. An accumulation of broken, damaged DNA can cause cellular aging, cancer and neurological diseases such as MND.

Until now, ways of repairing this sort of DNA damage have been poorly understood, but scientists hope to exploit this novel repair toolkit of proteins to protect us from aging, can...

The capacity of intestinal stem cells to maintain cellular balance in the gut decreases upon ageing. Researchers at the University of Helsinki have discovered a new mechanism of action between the nutrient adaptation of intestinal stem cells and ageing. The finding may make a difference when seeking ways to maintain the functional capacity of the ageing gut.

The cellular balance of the intestine is carefully regulated, and it is influenced, among other things, by nutrition: ample nutrition increases the total number of cells in the gut, whereas fasting decreases their number.

The relative number of different types of cells also changes according to nutrient status.

The questions of how the nutrition status of the gut controls stem cell division and differentiation, and how th...

Autophagy is an important biological recycling mechanism that is used to maintain homeostasis (balance or equilibrium) within all types of animal tissue. Many studies have attempted to understand the relationship between the reduction of autophagy and progression of aging in animals; however, none have provided a clear explanation, until now.

In 2009, a research team led by Tamotsu Yoshimori at Osaka University identified Rubicon as a protein factor that suppresses autophagy by controlling a specific step in this pathway...

New therapeutic molecules developed at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) show promise in reversing the memory loss linked to depression and aging.
These molecules not only rapidly improve symptoms, but remarkably, also appear to renew the underlying brain impairments causing memory loss in preclinical models.

“Currently there are no medications to treat cognitive symptoms such as memory loss that occur in depression, other mental illnesses and aging,” says Dr. Etienne Sibille, Deputy Director of the Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute at CAMH and lead scientist on the study.

What’s unique and p...