Mitochondrial Ion Channels in the Mitochondrial Dysfunction that Occurs with Aging

Mitochondria are the power plants of the cell, present by the hundred in near every cell type in the body. They are important in many fundamental cellular processes, but their primary task is to package chemical energy stores in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Mitochondrial function declines with age in all tissues, and this is particularly problematic in energy-hungry tissues such as the brain and muscles. The cause of this decline may be failure of the quality control mechanisms of mitophagy, responsible for dismantling damaged mitochondria, or it may have deeper roots, such as loss of capacity for mitochondrial fission. Until some of those possible roots can be fixed reliably, it will be hard to assign relative importance to their contributions. Given that mitochondrial function declines across the board, it will not be surprising to find that any given mechanism exhibits problems in older individuals. Mitochondria are wrapped in membranes, and those membranes use ion channels to pass various ions essential to their operation, such as calcium, back and forth. The open access paper here examines age-related mitochondrial dysfunction through the lens of ion channels and disruption of their activity. This seems likely a downstream issue, but as ever it is quite hard to determine cause and consequence in the mechanisms associated with aging without the ability to reliably intervene to fix just one thing in isolation. Mitochondria are often referred to...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs