Autophagy in Cardiovascular Aging is a Complicated Matter

Cell and tissue biology always turns out to be more complicated than we would all prefer. Present understanding is rarely complete to the point at which all obstacles are known. It is one of the reasons why the development of new classes of medical therapy is a challenging business. Consider the topic of autophagy in aging, for example. Autophagy is the name given to a collection of processes responsible for recycling unwanted and damaged molecules and structures in the cell. Material is conveyed, in one way or another depending on the type of autophagy, to a lysosome and engulfed. Lysosomes are membrane-bound packages of enzymes capable of breaking down just about anything a cell is likely to encounter. The efficiency of autophagy declines with age. There is evidence for loss of function in the processes moving materials to a lysosome, and much more evidence for lysosomes themselves to become dysfunctional. Increased autophagy is involved in most of the approaches discovered to date that slow aging via alterations of cellular metabolism. This includes calorie restriction and other forms of mild stress that trigger cells into increased maintenance activities, leading to a net gain in function. Equally, too much autophagy is harmful to cells, and in some tissues it appears that autophagy increases rather than decreases with aging. It may also be becoming less efficient, but challenges arise in the matter of how to measure a complicated system of many component parts tha...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs