autophagy in the olfactory neuron tagged posts

It’s not just what you Eat, it’s what’s Eating You

Aging Study, C. elegans, Worms

With disease, when you decrease autophagy (a garbage disposal-like process where cells “eat” debris they produce) the disease process is exacerbated and when you increase it you get the opposite effect. Aggregation of polyglutamine expansion protein is a hallmark of Huntington’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases. The picture shows that there are more aggregates of green fluorescence protein-labelled polyglutamine expansion protein in autophagy deficient worms (bottom) compared to normal worms (top).

Restricting how much you eat without starving has been shown to robustly extend lifespan in more than 20 species of animals including primates. How this works is still unclear...

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