Tag: daily news

Heat shock proteins such as HSP70 are molecular chaperones involved in cellular housekeeping processes that clear out damaged or misfolded proteins. Their activity increases in response to heat, toxins, and various other forms of cellular stress, and dialing up the activity of heat shock proteins is involved in a number of methods demonstrated to slow aging in laboratory animals. There are a few programs underway in the research community aimed at producing therapies that increase heat shock protein activity, especially for neurodegenerative conditions involving protein aggregates, but nothing that has yet made the leap into later stages of development and higher levels of funding: Reducing the levels of toxic protein aggregates has become a focus of therapy for disorders like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, as well as

Of the many methods of slowing aging discovered to date most have only a small effect in short-lived species such as mice, around a 10{c754d8f4a6af077a182a96e5a5e47e38ce50ff83c235579d09299c097124e52d} increase in healthy or maximum life span. Based on what we know of methods where we do have data for comparison, such as calorie restriction, these methodologies are expected to have even smaller effects in longer-lived species such as ourselves. Worth spending time on? Probably not. We need to chase after new and better biotechnology that can provide comprehensive repair of the damage that causes aging, not slight optimizations to our internal engines so that they wear out just a little bit more slowly. Interestingly, many methods of modestly slowing aging in mammals such as mice have strongly gender-specific

Telomeres are the caps at the ends of chromosomes, shortening with each cell division in normal cells. When very short a cell self-destructs or falls into a senescent state and ceases further replication. Stem cells maintain long telomeres via the activity of telomerase, and provide fresh new long-telomere daughter cells to replace those lost over time in tissues throughout the body. Average telomere length in a cell sample is thus a reflection of stem cell activity and consequent cell replacement rates, as well as the pace of cell division. It is commonly measured in immune cells from a blood sample, and tends to fall during periods of ill health and be lower for older people. This should not be surprising given that stem cell activity