Engineering an Increase in Retrotransposon Activity Accelerates Aspects of Aging in Flies

One has to be somewhat careful when declaring that an intervention produces accelerated aging. Interventions that reduce health and life span in ways that mimic aspects of aging tend to be narrow in effect, causing elevated levels of a specific form of molecular damage, often one of those thought to be involved in natural aging. DNA repair deficiencies cause what looks a lot like accelerated aging, but should really be thought of as an excess of only one type of age-related damage, nuclear DNA damage. It might be possible to learn things from this type of malfunction, but given that it is very unlike natural aging, it is more likely that a close inspection of the cellular biochemistry and tissue dysfunction involved would be misleading. One can make similar, more difficult arguments regarding whether or not excess visceral fat tissue produces accelerated aging by increasing the burden of cellular senescence, or whether this should be viewed in much the same way as DNA repair deficiencies. In today's open access paper, researchers note that engineering a greater activity of retrotransposons, in effect producing DNA damage as the transposable elements replicate themselves to break the parts of the genome they copy into, accelerates aspects of aging in flies. This is a closer analogy to DNA repair deficiencies than the question of obesity, again a way to amplify natural processes of DNA damage with consequences that can mimic natural aging in some ways. Retrotransposons a...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs