Fight Aging! Newsletter, March 13th 2023

In this study, we report the extensive and progressive accumulation of misfolded proteins during natural aging/senescence in different models, in the absence of disease. We coined the term age-ggregates to refer to this subset of proteins. Our findings demonstrate that age-ggregates exhibit the main characteristics of misfolded protein aggregates implicated in PMDs, including insolubility in detergents, protease-resistance, and staining with dyes specific for misfolded aggregates. Misfolded protein aggregates with these characteristics are thought to be implicated in some of today most prevalent diseases, including Alzheimer's disease and related forms of dementia, Parkinson's disease, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, type 2 diabetes, and even cancer. The strongest risk factor for all these diseases is aging, supporting our concept that advanced age is associated with increased accumulation of misfolded protein aggregates. We found intracellular age-ggregation in the aged brain, where misfolded proteins are sequestered into aggresomes. Aggresomes have been studied in the context of neurodegenerative diseases, where they act as a general defense mechanism against high levels of accumulation of toxic misfolded proteins. Our results indicate that the aged brain contains relatively large amounts of misfolded species, whose soluble versions participate in cellular pathways that play fundamental roles in preserving basic functions, such as protein quality control, synapsis, an...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs