Age-Related Failure of Autophagy Contributes to Stem Cell Decline

Researchers here provide evidence that points to declining autophagy as a cause of the faltering stem cell activity that accompanies aging. Autophagy is an important process of cellular maintenance, a part of recycling damaged structures and proteins within cells. Increased levels of autophagy are a feature of numerous methods of modestly slowing aging demonstrated in mice and other laboratory species. Unfortunately autophagy fails with age; like all systems it is impacted by the accumulation of molecular damage, and in particular in this case, by the growing amounts of metabolic waste making up lipofuscin, a mix of various compounds that mammalian biochemistry struggles to break down. Lipofuscin ends up accumulated in lysosomes, recycling systems in the cell that play an important role in autophagy, and degrades their function. If repairing this problem will not only improve the quality of cells, but also restore more youthful levels of stem cell activity, that would be a considerable victory. It is all the more reason to support the work of the SENS Research Foundation and others on ways to safely clear out the constituents of lipofuscin and thus restore lysosomal function in aged tissues. Researchers have discovered that in addition to its normal role in cellular waste-processing, autophagy also is needed for the orderly maintenance of blood-forming hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), the adult stem cells that give rise to red blood cells, which carry oxygen, and to ...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs