By the middle of this century 60 years for the first time in history exceeded the number of 18-year-old. Seemingly good news, but aging, people become frail, sick and dependent. Healthy ageing — to the benefit of both you and the society. Improving the health of older citizens has become one of the most important tasks of modern medicine. But if we want to live to great old age, we will need to understand the mechanisms that degrade our bodies with time. Search of ways to prevent, stop, or treatment of old age is already more than 60 years.
Over the past ten years, there has been amazing progress. In 2009 showed that the drug rapamycin increases the lifespan of mice by 10-15%. Two years later, the study showed that the experimental purging “senescent” cells — outside the cells that accumulate with age and affect tissue — to improve healthy lifespan in laboratory mice. These results cannot fail to please those who blame senescent cells in the health problems in old age and is looking for action against them.
The research was conducted, whose aim was the search of the types of genes that change expression level (the process by which gene information is used for the production of tens of thousands of proteins needed by the cell in the aging process). They showed that the biggest changes occur in the genes that regulate the production of “messenger RNA”. They convey information, christodoula in DNA, the cellular mechanisms that translate it into proteins.
In human cells proteins, known as factors “RNA splicing”, determine which messenger RNA can be made from the building blocks of RNA in the process called RNA splicing. The ability of our cells to make it age restricted. It is not clear the following: this loss is due to the fact that senescent cells accumulate in aging tissues, or due to something new happening in parallel with aging cells?
New findings
BVC recently published in Cell Biology research shows that a natural substance can actually rejuvenate aging cells, affecting RNA splicing.
In the experiment, the scientists treated these cells with compounds synthesized based on resveratrol — a natural product which is found in red wine, berries and other food, — which was to modify the splicing of RNA in cancer cells. Resveratrol can be found in many natural products, and it affects a variety of cellular pathway. But a synthetic variant of the scientists were much more accurate and mainly affects the RNA splicing.
Treated senescent cells showed a striking effect of “rejuvenation”. Schematic of RNA splicing has been updated to its young state, and senescent culture started to grow again. Variations of the basic experiment showed that the limiting factor splicing split with the aging of the cells, but interacts with it.
The recovery of RNA splicing updates senescent cells partly because our cells typically exhibit a senescence through shortening of telomeres, the gradual loss of DNA at chromosome ends that occurs with repeated cell division. Some factors of RNA splicing, which decreases with age, can restore the telomeres, along with the restoration of the telomeres and stop the aging of cells.
Limit splicing has serious implications for the ability of cells to divide and tissues to cope with stress. It limits the reaction of cells than potentially leads to brittle, distinctive trait of aging in many organisms, including human.
This discovery not only opens the door for detailed study of RNA splicing, but also shows that the restriction of splicing may be the most important mechanism of development of a large number of age-related diseases.
Medications and diet
New connections has allowed scientists to identify key molecular paths that mediate the restriction of splicing factors and may in the future lay the platform for antidegredation drugs. But these are just a few of the joints of thousands.
Because resveratrol and similar molecules can be found in food, the work of scientists could identify an unexpected link between diet and RNA splicing. Many scientists showed a positive effect of diets containing this food — change in splicing could be one, but not the only way of mediating this effect. However, as scientists say, you have to drink 30 litres of red wine a day to bring the dose coming of analogues of resveratrol to the level used in the experiment.
Pure resveratrol already exists in a dietary Supplement. But to take it is not recommended. Like many other natural products, resveratrol has a number of properties, some of which can be useful and some are not.
Whether red wine rejuvenates?
Ilya Hel