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New-found gene could play role in aging from birth

New-found gene could play role in aging from birth

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It's something of an eternal question: Can we slow or even reverse aging? Although genetic manipulations can alter some cellular processes, not so much is known about the mechanisms of the aging process in living things. Now scientists have found in animal models that one gene plays a surprising role in ...



It's something of an eternal question: Can we slow or even reverse aging? Although genetic manipulations can alter some cellular processes, not so much is known about the mechanisms of the aging process in liv­ing things.

Now sci­en­tists have found in animal mod­els that one gene plays a surprising role in ag­ing that can be de­tected early on in de­vel­op­ment. They say the dis­cov­ery could point to­ward the pos­si­bil­ity of one day us­ing ther­a­peu­tics, even some com­monly used ones, to manipulate the ag­ing process it­self.

This “de­vel­op­mental gene, known as Sp­ns1, may me­di­ate the ag­ing pro­cess,” said Shuji Ki­shi, a pro­fes­sor at the from the Flor­i­da cam­pus of The Scripps Re­search In­sti­tute who led the stu­dy, pub­lished by the jour­nal PLoS Ge­net­ics. “Even a par­tial loss of Sp­ns1 func­tion can speed ag­ing.”

Us­ing var­i­ous ge­net­ic ap­proaches to dis­turb Sp­ns1 dur­ing the em­bry­on­ic and/or lar­val stages of ze­brafish-which have emerged as use­ful for stu­dying dis­eases as­so­ci­at­ed with de­vel­op­ment and ag­ing-the sci­en­tists said they pro­duced some mod­els with a short­ened life span, oth­ers that lived long lives.

While most stud­ies of “senescence”-de­creases in a cel­l's pow­er of di­vi­sion and growth-have fo­cused on lat­er stages of life, the new study ex­plores early stages. “Muta­t­ions to Sp­ns1 both dis­turbs de­vel­op­mental se­nes­cence and badly af­fects the long-term bio-chronological aging pro­cess,” Ki­shi said.

The study found that Sp­ns1, along with a pair of “tumor sup­pres­sor genes,” called be­clin 1 and p53, can influence senescence through two dif­fer­ent mech­a­nisms: the Sp­ns1 de­fect was en­hanced by Be­clin 1 but sup­pressed by ‘basal' p53. Sp­ns1 also was found to hinder au­tophagy, a pro­cess where­by cells re­move unwanted or destructive proteins and bal­ance en­er­gy needs during various life stages.

Build­ing on their in­sights from the stu­dy, Ki­shi and his col­leagues not­ed in the fu­ture ther­a­peu­tics might be able in­flu­ence ag­ing through Sp­ns1. He said a com­monly used ant­ac­id, Prilosec, has been shown to tem­po­rarily sup­press au­tophagic ab­nor­mal­ity and se­nes­cence seen in the Sp­ns1 de­fi­cien­cy.

Source : world-science.net
Cite This Article as
worldscience, "New-found gene could play role in aging from birth", MachPrinciple, July 22, 2014, https://machprinciple.com/post/new-found-gene-could-play-role-in-aging-from-birth

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