A New Discovery Relating to Heat Shock Factors and Longevity

The heat shock factor HSF-1 is involved in the processes of cellular maintenance relating to ensuring correct protein folding and clearing out misfolded proteins. Protein shape is vital to the operation of cellular machinery, and the presence of misfolded proteins should be considered a form of damage. It has been demonstrated that more HSF-1 extends life and improves tolerance to damage-inducing stress in laboratory animals, and thus a number of research groups are interested in producing treatments based on this effect. For 35 years, researchers have worked under the assumption that when cells undergo heat shock, as with a fever, they produce a protein that triggers a cascade of events that field even more chaperones to refold unraveling proteins that could kill the cell. The protein, HSF-1 (heat shock factor-1), does this by binding to promoters upstream of the 350-plus chaperone genes, upping the genes' activity and launching the army of chaperones, which originally were called "heat shock proteins." Injecting animals with HSF-1 has been shown not only to increase their tolerance of heat stress, but to increase lifespan. Because an accumulation of misfolded proteins has been implicated in aging and in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases, scientists have sought ways to artificially boost HSF-1 in order to reduce the protein plaques and tangles that eventually kill brain cells. To date, such boosters have extended lifespan...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs