Aging is a common phenomenon among organisms, however, lifespan tends to vary across different species to a significant extent among vertebrates themselves. Aging occurs due to the gradual increase in DNA damage, disruption of cellular organelles, deregulation of protein function, disrupted metabolism and oxidative stress [1].
Longevity. Technology: The differences in lifespan are driven by trade-offs and evolutionary trajectories in the genomes of organisms. Age-specific selection also impacts allele (variations of a gene) frequencies in a population. This in turn impacts environment-specific mortality risk and disease susceptibility. Moreover, mutational processes are influenced by life history and age in both somatic and germline cells.
Now, a new review published in Trends in Genetics discusses recent advances in the evolution of aging at population, organismal and cellular scales.
Biomedical engineers at Duke University have demonstrated that one of the most dangerous mutations found in skin cancers might moonlight as a pathway to mending a broken heart.
The genetic mutation in the protein BRAF, a part of the MAPK signaling pathway that can promote cell division, is one of the most common and most aggressive found in melanoma patients. In a new study, researchers show that introducing this mutation to rat heart tissue grown in a laboratory can induce growth.
Repairing cardiac muscle after a heart attack is the “holy grail” of heart research, complicated by the fact that heart tissue does not regenerate on its own. One potential strategy would be to persuade heart muscle cells to divide by safely delivering a therapeutic gene to patients and fully controlling its activity in the heart.
Many people are wired to seek and respond to rewards. Your brain interprets food as rewarding when you are hungry and water as rewarding when you are thirsty.
But addictive substances like alcohol and drugs of abuse can overwhelm the natural reward pathways in your brain, resulting in intolerable cravings and reduced impulse control.
A popular misconception is that addiction is a result of low willpower. But an explosion of knowledge and technology in the field of molecular genetics has changed our basic understanding of addiction drastically over the past decade. The general consensus among scientists and health care professionals is that there is a strong neurobiological and genetic basis for addiction.
The authors identify causality-enriched CpGs linked to aging using Mendelian randomization. They develop new epigenetic clocks, DamAge and AdaptAge, that more reliably track age-related changes, offering insights into aging mechanisms and interventions.
Heart tumor or cardiac tumor is a rare condition that is prevalent in adults. Though the exact cause is unknown, genetics could play a role.
Year 2018 Age related symptoms may be even more simple to reverse by recharging the mitochondria then eventually we can have genetically engineered mitochondria to run longer so the cycles of the human body could run indefinitely.
Singh, B., Schoeb, T.R., Bajpai, P. et al. Reversing wrinkled skin and hair loss in mice by restoring mitochondrial function. Cell Death Dis 9, 735 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41419-018-0765-9
Originally published on Illumina News Center
Call it archaeology by other means. Rather than sifting through tons of dirt and carefully cataloguing human artifacts, Eske Willerslev and his colleagues have used Illumina NovaSeq Systems to sequence 5,000 ancient human genomes, revealing previously unseen historical nuance. This research tour de force, which is being published this month in four papers in the journal Nature, offers a rich view of early human migrations, mating habits, and disease variants, and their impact on modern Europeans.
“We wanted to sequence this ancient DNA so we could better understand human history,” says Willerslev, who is professor and director at the Centre of Excellence in GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen and the Prince Philip Professor of Ecology & Evolution at Cambridge University. “These results describe where we came from and why there’s so much variation in disease risk.”
Researchers have found that treating seeds with ethylene gas increases both their growth and stress tolerance. This discovery, involving enhanced photosynthesis and carbohydrate production in plants, offers a potential breakthrough in improving crop yields and resilience against environmental stressors.
Just like any other organism, plants can get stressed. Usually, it’s conditions like heat and drought that lead to this stress, and when they’re stressed, plants might not grow as large or produce as much. This can be a problem for farmers, so many scientists have tried genetically modifying plants to be more resilient.
However plants modified for higher crop yields tend to have a lower stress tolerance because they put more energy into growth than into protection against stresses. Similarly, improving the ability of plants to survive stress often results in plants that produce less because they put more energy into protection than into growth. This conundrum makes it difficult to improve crop production.