Cellular Enlargement in Aging, a Poorly Studied Topic

Some cells are small, others large. Cell size is connected to cell function, and different varieties of cell maintain tight control over their various different sizes. Senescent cells are known to become much larger than their origin cell type, and one effort to detect senescent cells in blood samples made use of this feature. Do non-senescent cells lose control of size in old tissues, however? To what degree is this a feature of aging that produces further downstream issues, versus being a consequence of other problematic changes in cell behavior that occur with age? These are not well-studied questions. A large body of literature highlights two important findings: 1) Different cell types display different average sizes and 2) cells maintain a uniform size by using several regulatory pathways. This raises the question of why cells invest in maintaining their size. Therefore, understanding what happens when cells fail to regulate their size is important. While the first findings around this topic led to controversial conclusions, budding yeast has been a key model organism to provide the first evidence that cellular enlargement could be directly linked to cellular dysfunction during aging. It is known that budding yeast cells enlarge during aging. Preventing this enlargement with drugs preserves their replicative age. Similarly, preventing cellular enlargement in vitro in primary human cells has been shown to maintain their capacity to enter the cell cycle thereby av...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs