What is Immortality?
https://www.guidebooktolife.com/are-we-close-to-immortality?…rl10y2xoME
Category: neuroscience – Page 847
Julie K. Andersen at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato as a speaker for the 2019 Undoing Aging Conference.
“Julie has been associated with SENS since its earliest days: she participated in the first workshop that I organised to discuss it, in 2000, and she was a co-author on the first SENS paper in 2002. We’re delighted to be funding her laboratory at the Buck Institute to explore new ways of eliminating neurofibrillary tangles from neurons of Alzheimer’s sufferers, and at UA2019 we will hear about their initial progress.” says Aubrey de Grey.
https://www.undoing-aging.org/news/dr-julie-k-andersen-to-sp…Qq6fZbArkM #
Desiccants kill more than plants. Herbicides like glyphosate also kill bacteria. You could just as easily call them “antibiotics.” Our gut bacteria are sensitive to antibiotics, which is why we should avoid eating herbicides. When our microbes are healthy, our immune system is stable. But when microbes are disturbed, diseases like obesity, Alzheimer’s, or celiac disease can result.
Driving down a grid road in central Saskatchewan, a machine that looks like a giant insect approaches me in a cloud of dust. The cab, hanging 8 feet above the road, is suspended by tires at least 6 feet tall, with wing-like appendages folded along each side. Should I drive around it or under it?
It is harvest season, and the high-clearance sprayer is on its way to desiccate a field. Desiccation may be the most widespread farming practice you’ve never heard of. Farmers desiccate by applying herbicide to their crops; this kills all the plants at the same time, making them uniformly dry and easier to cut. In essence, desiccation speeds up plant aging. Before desiccation, crops would have to dry out naturally at the end of the season. Today, almost all conventional crops are desiccated in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Chances are that most of what you ate today was harvested using a desiccant, but you’d never know.
Mike Shewchuk jumps down from his swather as I pull into his farmyard. He is a young farmer whose blond brush cut and a robust stride would have not been out of place 50 years ago. Along with his dad, uncles, and brother, he farms 15,000 acres an hour outside of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. They recently received a century farm award, for having continuously farmed the land since the early 1900s.
People with the rare and fatal brain disorder Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) show signs of the disease in their eyes, according to a new study.
The study found evidence of prions — the infectious proteins that cause the disease — in the eyes of nearly a dozen patients with CJD.
The findings suggest that patients’ eyes could potentially provide a “window” to the brain that may help researchers diagnose the disease early, if new eye tests are developed. [’Eye’ Can’t Look: 9 Eyeball Injuries That Will Make You Squirm].
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Scientists in Fife are investigating if tiny lasers could be used to better understand diseases such as cancer.
Using nano-technology, the St Andrews University experts created lasers small enough to fit inside live cells which can then be tracked.
With a diameter of a thousandth of a millimetre, the lasers can be inserted into neurons or immune cells.
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One of the strangest things that can sicken us—a rogue misfolded protein that destroys the brain, known as a prion—is even scarier than we knew. Researchers were able to find the prions responsible for sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (sCJD), the most common prion disease in people, seeded everywhere in the eyes of 11 patients affected by it.
The findings are the latest to suggest that these universally fatal, if rare, diseases can be spread through the eyes. But they also indicate that our eyes might be someday be used to spot these cases with less hassle than current testing methods.
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Experts increasingly think a system that could help paralyzed patients is within reach.
- By Sharon Begley, STAT on November 20, 2018
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A time to fast
Posted in biotech/medical, economics, genetics, life extension, neuroscience
! A new review on the positive effects on lifespan and health of fasting and calorie restriction.
Nutrient composition and caloric intake have traditionally been used to devise optimized diets for various phases of life. Adjustment of meal size and frequency have emerged as powerful tools to ameliorate and postpone the onset of disease and delay aging, whereas periods of fasting, with or without reduced energy intake, can have profound health benefits. The underlying physiological processes involve periodic shifts of metabolic fuel sources, promotion of repair mechanisms, and the optimization of energy utilization for cellular and organismal health. Future research endeavors should be directed to the integration of a balanced nutritious diet with controlled meal size and patterns and periods of fasting to develop better strategies to prevent, postpone, and treat the socioeconomical burden of chronic diseases associated with aging.
The worldwide increase in life expectancy has not been paralleled by an equivalent increase in healthy aging. Developed and developing countries are facing social and economic challenges caused by disproportional increases in their elderly populations and the accompanying burden of chronic diseases. Geriatricians and gerontologists have contributed greatly to our understanding of the consequences and processes that underlie aging from clinical, social, mental, physical, and biological perspectives. The primary goal of aging research is to improve the health of older persons and to design and test interventions that may prevent or delay age-related diseases. Besides socioeconomic status, energy, environmental quality, and genetics are the most powerful determinants of health and longevity. Although environmental quality and genetics are not under our direct control, energy intake is.
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Researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center discovered that the protease USP13 (ubiquitin-specific peptidase 13) plays a role in the accumulation of toxic alpha-synuclein aggregates that characterize Parkinson’s disease [1].
Abstract
Ubiquitin specific proteases (USPs) are de-ubiquitinases that control the protein ubiquitination cycle. The role of de-ubiquitinases is poorly understood in neurodegenerative diseases. We found that USP13 is overexpressed in the post-mortem Parkinson’s disease (PD) brain. We investigated whether changes in USP13 levels can affect two molecules, parkin and alpha-synuclein, that are implicated in PD pathogenesis. Parkin is an E3 ubiquitin ligase that is regulated by ubiquitination and targets certain proteins for degradation, and alpha-synuclein may be ubiquitinated and recycled in the normal brain. We found that USP13 independently regulates parkin and alpha-synuclein ubiquitination in models of alpha-synucleinopathies. USP13 shRNA knockdown increases alpha-synuclein ubiquitination and clearance in a parkin-independent manner.
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