Mild Mitochondrial Stress Found to Prevent Some of the Age-Related Declines in Cellular Maintenance in Nematodes

Hormesis is a near ubiquitous phenomenon in living organisms and their component parts: a little damage, a short or mild exposure to damaging circumstances, can result in a net benefit to health and longevity. Cells respond to damage or stress by increasing their self-repair efforts for some period of time, maintaining their function more effectively than would otherwise have been the case. At the high level, the outcomes of hormesis have been measured for a wide variety of stresses and systems, from individual cells to entire organisms. At the low level of specific biochemical processes and interaction of components inside the cell, there is a lot more mapping and cataloging to be accomplished, however. The research noted below is an example of the this sort of exploration. It is an interesting study for demonstrating that some forms of stress response can turn back a fraction of the age-related decline in cellular maintenance processes, at least temporarily. It is well known that cellular maintenance falters in later life. This is in some cases a form of unhelpful reaction or side-effect caused by rising levels of damage and dysfunction, and in others it is a direct consequence of damage to the systems responsible for maintenance and repair. As an example of the second type, the lysosomes responsible for recycling broken molecules and structures in the cell can become clogged with rare, resilient waste compounds that they cannot process. The whole process of repair r...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs