- Aging is a natural part of life and sometimes changes our bodies in ways we don’t like.
- Researchers at Harvard Medical School believe that epigenetic changes, not just DNA changes, affect aging.
- This view is supported by experiments in which epigenetic changes caused initial aging in mice, and reversal of the induced changes caused reverse aging.
aging It’s a life process that everyone goes through. As we age, our bodies change in many ways.
Scientists
For many years, most researchers believed there were changes in the body’s DNA.
Now, a team led by Harvard Medical School researchers is finding support for another hypothesis. DNA — called
The research will be published in a journal
Gene activity, which is the “switching on” and “switching off” of a gene, epigenetic Modification, a chemical change in DNA that does not alter the DNA sequence.Epigenetics studies how the environment changes gene It works without actually changing the gene itself.
Some examples of what can lead to epigenetic changes:
The study is not the first time researchers have used epigenetics to study aging. For example, previous research has shown that epigenetics provides biological clock It helps scientists measure the aging rate of humans.
medical news today talked with Dr. David SinclairProfessor of Genetics and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Aging Research Biology at Harvard Medical School, and senior author of the study.
Dr. Sinclair said the research team decided to study epigenetics as a potential driver of the aging process based on previous work he was involved with in the 1990s.
“When I turned on the three, I found the following”
During the study, the researchers created temporary, fast-healing “cuts” in the mouse’s DNA. These cuts mimic the effects of certain lifestyles and environments on the epigenetic patterns of DNA.
Researchers found that cuts altered epigenetic patterns in mice, eventually causing dysfunction, causing them to look older and begin to behave.These mice also increased
Scientists then administered gene therapy to these mice to reverse the epigenetic changes, “resetting” the mice’s epigenetic program and ultimately reversing the aging that the mice experienced.
“We hope that these results will be seen as a tipping point in our ability to control aging,” Sinclair said. “This is the first study to show that the biological age of a complex animal can be precisely controlled, such that it can move back and forth at will.”
MNT We also talked about this study Dr. Santosh Kesariis a Neurologist at Providence St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, CA and Regional Medical Director for the Research and Clinical Institute in Providence, Southern California.
Dr. Kesari said this is “very exciting research” and will advance our understanding of how aging occurs and how it can be measured at the DNA level.
“And not only do we accumulate mutations in our DNA, which is thought to be one of the main causes of aging-related disorders, but how the DNA is read actually contributes to aging. It turned out to be,” Dr. Kesari explained. “As we age, our DNA reading is greatly affected. It also enables new ways of thinking about targeting.”
Since this study was conducted in an animal model, Dr. Kesari said the next question and challenge is to understand how individual humans age in the real world.
“And we’re doing very clever research to look at biomarkers that give you a signal that you’re actually positively impacting aging,” he continued. What? What drugs can we use to test it?”
“Certainly, we don’t want to wait 10, 20, or 30 years to do an aging study. So the real challenge is to identify markers in humans… test drugs and then Whether the drugs work or not has an impact on age-related disability,” Dr. Kesari concluded.