Genetics by the Numbers
Even though scientists have been studying genetics since the mid-19th century, they continue to make new discoveries about genes and how they impact our health on a regular basis. NIGMS researchers study how genes are expressed and regulated, how gene variants with different “spellings” of their genetic code affect health, and much more. Get the drop on DNA and the gist of genes with these fast facts:
3.2 Billion
A marbled lungfish has a genome over 40 times larger than humans. Credit: iStock.
That’s how many base pairs—or sets of genetic “letters”—make up the human genome. If you were...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - April 24, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Chrissa Chverchko Tags: Genes By the Numbers DNA Genomics Source Type: blogs
The Role of Immune Aging in Neurodegenerative Conditions
The research community has come to see chronic inflammation and other age-related immune system dysfunctions as an important aspect of neurodegenerative conditions. Inflammation in the short term is necessary for defense against pathogens and regeneration following injury. Unresolved, constant inflammation is harmful to tissue structure and function, however, changing cell behavior for the worse. In brain tissue, the effects of inflammatory signaling on the behavior of innate immune cells called microglia appears particularly important. Neurogenerative conditions are characterized by activated microglia. These microglia ar...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 23, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Assessing Age-Related Changes in Muscle Stem Cell Biochemistry
Researchers here discuss some of the results achieved in building the Human Skeletal Muscle Aging Atlas. Focusing on stem cells in muscle tissue, they find numerous changes in gene expression relating to inflammation and reduced activity. The chronic inflammation characteristic of aging, provoked by senescent cells and innate immune reactions to molecular damage, is known to be involved in many of the dysfunctions of aging. Loss of stem cell activity, and thus a reduced supply of daughter somatic cells to replace losses and repair damage, is one of those dysfunctions.
Skeletal muscle aging is a key contributor to ...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 22, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, April 22nd 2024
This study reveals a potential treatment for human mitochondrial diseases.
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A Population Study Correlates Air Pollution with Faster Cognitive Aging
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2024/04/a-population-study-correlates-air-pollution-with-faster-cognitive-aging/
A number of large epidemiological studies provide evidence for long-term exposure to greater levels of air pollution to accelerate the onset and progression of age-related disease. A few of these manage to control for the tendency for wealthier people to avoid living in areas with higher particulate air pollution, ...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 21, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Parkinson's Disease in the SENS View of Damage Repair
The Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) is a view of aging as accumulated damage. Drawing from the extensive scientific literature on aging, the originators of SENS created an outline of the forms of cell and tissue damage that are fundamental causes of aging, in that they occur as a natural side-effect of the normal operation of our cellular biochemistry. So we might consider the loss of vital cells due to declining stem cell function, mutations to nuclear DNA and mitochondrial DNA, cross-linking of vital molecules in the extracellular matrix, accumulated metabolic waste in long-lived cells, generation ...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 19, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Bis(monoacylglycero)phosphates Accumulate in Aged Tissues
Lipid metabolism is changed and disrupted with advancing age, as is the case for all complex mechanisms in the body. There are a great many different lipids present in the body; even the list of classes of lipid is a long one. Finding specific changes that relate to aging can be interesting, but the challenge lie in better understanding how those changes come about, and whether they causes significant harm to tissues. Many age-related changes in molecular biochemistry are far downstream of the important causes of aging and do not cause much further disruption in and of themselves.
In recent years, laboratory resea...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 19, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
MKP1 as a Target for Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis
The causes of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis remain somewhat unclear, which is often the case for conditions in which treatments struggle to achieve more than a slowed progression. There is evidence for cellular senescence to drive the progression of fibrosis, but most research remains focused on the molecular biochemistry of fibroblasts, the cells responsible for building the collagen deposits characteristic of fibrotic tissue.
The process by which lung injury either leads to healing or fibrosis relies in part on what happens to a cell called a fibroblast, which forms connective tissue. During injury or illness, f...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 19, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Sea Urchins as a Model of Negligible Senescence
Species that exhibit negligible senescence tend to be long-lived, but more interestingly appear to exhibit few to none of the functional declines of degenerative aging until very late in life, quite unlike the situation for most mammals, and particularly for humans. One can argue that the most useful species that exhibit negligible senescence are those with near relative species that age more normally. The closer the relative, the more likely it is that comparing the biochemistry of the two will lead to new knowledge regarding aging. So naked mole rats versus other, less long-lived mole rats, Brandt's bat versus other shor...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 17, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Science Snippet: Breaking Down Biodegradability
Have you ever noticed plastic utensils or paper plates labeled as “biodegradable” and wondered what that meant? Materials are biodegradable when microorganisms such as bacteria can break them down into their building blocks.
Biodegradable Plastics
Plastic is everywhere: Milk jugs, grocery bags, and takeout containers are just a few examples. There are many types of plastic, but they’re all made up of long chains of repeating subunits called polymers. These polymers are designed to be durable and resistant to factors like heat, sunlight, and water, which makes them useful in a variety of situations.
Toget...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - April 17, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Chrissa Chverchko Tags: Chemistry, Biochemistry and Pharmacology STEM Education Bacteria Science Snippet Source Type: blogs
Bacterial Peptides Improve Mitochondrial Function in Intestinal Tissues
This study reveals a potential treatment for human mitochondrial diseases.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2024.114067 (Source: Fight Aging!)
Source: Fight Aging! - April 17, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Martin Burke: Replacing Lost Proteins to Treat Disease
As a medical student, Martin Burke, M.D., Ph.D., helped care for a young college student with cystic fibrosis (CF), an inherited disease that affects the body’s ability to make sweat and mucus. Dr. Burke had just studied CF in class, so he relayed what he had learned to her. He had a lot of information to give—doctors and researchers know the exact amino acid changes in an ion channel protein called cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) that cause CF.
Credit: UIUC News Bureau, Fred Zwicky.
“At one point in the conversation, she stopped me and said, ‘It sounds like you know exactly what’s...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - April 10, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Chrissa Chverchko Tags: Being a Scientist Chemistry, Biochemistry and Pharmacology Tools and Techniques Medicines Profiles Source Type: blogs
What Is Genetics?
This post is the first in our miniseries on genetics. Stay tuned for more!
Genetics is the study of genes and heredity—how traits are passed from parents to children through DNA. A gene is a segment of DNA that contains instructions for building one or more molecules that help the body work. Researchers estimate that humans have about 20,000 genes, which account for about 1 percent of our DNA. The remainder of the DNA plays a role in regulating genes, and scientists are researching other potential functions.
DNA Details
Credit: NIGMS.
DNA is shaped like a twisted ladder, called a double heli...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - April 8, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Chrissa Chverchko Tags: Genes Common questions DNA Genetics Miniseries Genomics Source Type: blogs
In Other Words: What Being Unionized Means for Molecules
Did you know that molecules can be unionized? But it doesn’t mean they form a labor union. In chemistry, unionized (pronounced “un-ionized”) is the opposite of ionized, which means “electrically charged.”
Credit: NIGMS.
Unionized molecules don’t have electrical charges because they have the same number of electrons and protons. Ionized molecules, also called ions, become charged by gaining or losing electrons. Ions with extra electrons, known as anions, have a negative charge. Ions with fewer electrons than normal, called cations, have a positive charge.
Unionization’s Impacts
A molecule’s c...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - April 3, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Chrissa Chverchko Tags: Chemistry, Biochemistry and Pharmacology Tools and Techniques In Other Words Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, April 1st 2024
This study supports the proposed model that aging-related loss of colonic crypt epithelial cell AMP gene expression can promote increased relative abundances of Gn inflammaging-associated bacteria and gene expression markers of colonic inflammaging. These data may support new targets for aging-related therapies based on intestinal genes and microbiomes.
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A Skeptical View of the Role of Nuclear DNA Damage in Aging
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2024/03/a-skeptical-view-of-the-role-of-nuclear-dna-damage-in-aging/
It is evident and settled that stochastic nuclear DNA damag...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 31, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
More Commentary on the Role of PF4 in Reducing Brain Inflammation
Platelets in the blood are not just involved in clotting. Near every aspect of our biology has evolved many different functions, and the complexity of our biochemistry is still far from fully explored. Increased platelet factor 4 (PF4) shows up as a feature in a number of different interventions known to reduce inflammation in the aging brain. Researchers are now moving in the direction of developing therapies for neurodegenerative conditions based on the upregulation of PF4 or the delivery of recombinant PF4.
Platelets are a component of blood best known for their role in clotting, but research in recent years ha...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 27, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
