By the middle of this century, 60-year-olds had surpassed 18-year-olds for the first time in human history. It would seem like good news, but as people get older, they become fragile, sick and addicted. Healthy old age is good for both you and society. Improving the health of senior citizens has become one of the most important tasks of modern medicine. But if we want people to live healthy in old age, we will need to understand the mechanisms that deteriorate our bodies over time. The search for ways to prevent, stop or reverse aging has been going on for over 60 years.
Over the past ten years, amazing progress has been made. In 2009, the drug rapamycin was shown to increase the lifespan of mice by 10-15%. Two years later, a study showed that experimental purification of "senescent" cells - non-working cells that accumulate with age and damage tissue - improved the healthy lifespan of laboratory mice. These results are good news for those who blame senescent cells for health problems in old age and are looking for measures to combat them.
Research has been conducted to find the types of genes that change the level of expression (the process by which gene information is used to produce tens of thousands of proteins needed by the cell during aging). They showed that the biggest changes occur in the genes that regulate the production of RNA messengers. They transmit the information stored in DNA to cellular machinery that turns it into proteins.
In the human cell, proteins known as "RNA splicing factors" determine which RNA messenger can be made from the building blocks of RNA in a process called RNA splicing. The ability of our cells to do this is limited as we age. The following is not clear: is this loss due to the fact that senescent cells accumulate in aging tissues, or is it due to something new that occurs in parallel with cell aging?
New finds
A recent study published in BVC Cell Biology shows that naturally occurring substances can actually rejuvenate aging cells by affecting RNA splicing.
In the experiment, scientists treated such cells with compounds synthesized from resveratrol - a natural product found in red wine, berries and other foods - that was supposed to change the splicing of RNA in cancer cells. Resveratrol can be found in many natural foods and affects a wide variety of cellular pathways. But the synthetic version of the scientists turned out to be much more accurate and mainly affected RNA splicing.
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The treated senescent cells showed a striking "rejuvenation" effect. The RNA splicing patterns were updated to their adolescent state and senescent cultures began to grow again. Variations in the main experiment showed that the splicing limiting factor is shared with, but interacts with, aging.
Repairs to RNA splicing renews senescent cells in part because our cells typically exhibit senescence through telomere shortening, the gradual loss of DNA at the ends of chromosomes that occurs as cells divide again. Several factors of RNA splicing, which decrease with age, can repair telomeres, and cell aging stops along with the repair of telomeres.
Limiting splicing has serious implications for the ability of cells to divide and how tissues deal with stress. It limits cell responses, potentially leading to fragility, a hallmark of many aging organisms, including humans.
This discovery not only opens the door for a detailed study of RNA splicing, but also shows that splicing restriction may be the most important mechanism for the development of a large number of age-related diseases.
Medicines and diet
The new compounds allowed scientists to identify the key molecular pathways that mediate the limitation of splicing factors and may in the future lay a platform for the search for antidegenerative drugs. But these are just a few of the thousands.
Since resveratrol and similar molecules can be found in food, the scientists' work could reveal an unexpected link between diet and RNA splicing. Many scientists have shown the positive effect of diets containing this food - altering splicing may be one, but not the only way, mediating this effect. However, according to scientists, you will have to drink 30 liters of red wine a day to bring the dose of incoming resveratrol analogs to the level used in the experiment.
Pure resveratrol already exists as a dietary supplement. But taking it is not recommended. Like many natural foods, resveratrol has a variety of properties, some of which may be beneficial and some not.
Ilya Khel