{"id":28453,"date":"2016-07-29T14:46:31","date_gmt":"2016-07-29T21:46:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/theres-a-gene-that-reverses-cellular-aging-and-now-we-know-how"},"modified":"2017-04-24T20:08:24","modified_gmt":"2017-04-25T03:08:24","slug":"theres-a-gene-that-reverses-cellular-aging-and-now-we-know-how","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/theres-a-gene-that-reverses-cellular-aging-and-now-we-know-how","title":{"rendered":"There\u2019s A Gene That Reverses Cellular Aging, And Now We Know How"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/theres-a-gene-that-reverses-cellular-aging-and-now-we-know-how.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>NANOG. I just like the sound of it.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>In the biology lab-based equivalent of <em>Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade<\/em>, researchers from the University at Buffalo have uncovered the human body\u2019s internal fountain of eternal youth, in the form of a gene called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/stemcells\/2009\/0909\/090910\/full\/stemcells.2009.118.html\">NANOG<\/a>. When expressing this gene in aged stem cells, the team found that it reactivated certain processes that had become exhausted, restoring their ability to develop into fully functioning muscle cells.<\/p>\n<p>As we go about our lives, wear and tear causes the body\u2019s cells to die via a process called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iflscience.com\/health-and-medicine\/new-technique-extends-lifespan-mice-35-percent\/\">senescence<\/a>. When this occurs, new cells are created from stem cells in order to replace those that have become senescent, although when we hit <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iflscience.com\/health-and-medicine\/aging-not-universal-across-all-organisms\/\">old age<\/a> our stem cells become depleted or unable to develop.<\/p>\n<p>Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), for example, normally develop into smooth muscle cells (SMCs). However, once we reach a certain age, these MSCs lose their efficacy and start generating SMCs that lack a protein called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/books\/NBK9961\/\">actin<\/a>, rendering them unable to contract like healthy muscle tissue should.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iflscience.com\/health-and-medicine\/theres-a-gene-that-reverses-cellular-aging-and-now-we-know-how\/\">http:\/\/www.iflscience.com\/health-and-medicine\/theres-a-gene-...-know-how\/<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NANOG. I just like the sound of it. In the biology lab-based equivalent of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, researchers from the University at Buffalo have uncovered the human body\u2019s internal fountain of eternal youth, in the form of a gene called NANOG. When expressing this gene in aged stem cells, the team found [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":388,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,269],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-life-extension"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/388"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28453"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50087,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28453\/revisions\/50087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}