So Much to Do, So Little Selenium Needed
You may know that antioxidants can help protect your cells from oxidative damage, but do you know about selenium—an element often found in special proteins called antioxidant enzymes? Selenium is essential to your body, which means you must get it from the food you eat. But it’s a trace element so you only need a small amount to benefit from its effects. In addition to its antioxidant properties, it’s also important for reproduction, DNA synthesis, and hormone metabolism.
In our bodies, selenium works in antioxidant enzymes to help protect us from oxidative damage. The element is also found in antidandruf...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - December 21, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Chrissa Chverchko Tags: Chemistry, Biochemistry and Pharmacology Molecular Structures Cellular Processes Proteins Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, December 19th 2022
In conclusion, p16 deletion or p16 positive cell clearance could be a novel strategy preventing long term HFD-induced skin aging.
Association of LDL-Cholesterol with Mortality
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2022/12/association-of-ldl-cholesterol-with-mortality/
Researchers here report on a study of LDL-cholesterol and mortality risk in older people. As they note, data on this topic is conflicted once one moves beyond the matter of cardiovascular disease. Over a lifetime, higher LDL-cholesterol makes it easier to reach the tipping point at which cholesterol deposited in blood vessel walls produces e...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 18, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
A High Level Survey of Mechanisms of Brain Aging
Ultimately, we live and die as the brain lives and dies. The rest of the body is a support system, a complex one to be sure, but probably not as complex as the brain. Repairing the cell and tissue damage of aging in the body seems a more tractable challenge, in that replacement is always an option. Replace cells, replace the gut microbiome, add new tissues grown in a lab to organs like the liver and thymus, or grow a new body and transplant the brain. A path of ever increasing control over cells, cell signaling, and regeneration implies a future in which all damaged tissue can be replaced in one way or another ... except f...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 14, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, December 12th 2022
In conclusion, selective removal of senescent dermal fibroblasts can improve the skin aging phenotype, indicating that BPTES may be an effective novel therapeutic agent for skin aging.
Non-Dividing Neurons Do In Fact Become Senescent, Impairing Brain Function
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2022/12/non-dividing-neurons-do-in-fact-become-senescent-impairing-brain-function/
Cellular senescence is generally thought of as a characteristic of replicating cells; it is an end state reached when telomeres, reduced in length with each cell division, become too short. This is followed by programmed cell death...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 11, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Autophagy in Tauopathies Such as Alzheimer's Disease
Autophagy is the name given to a collection of maintenance processes responsible for tagging and recycling damaged, excess, or harmful proteins and structures in the cell. Better maintenance of molecular machinery means a better operation of cells and tissues. Upregulation of autophagy is a feature of many of the approaches shown to modestly slow aging in animal studies, those that mimic some of the biochemistry of calorie restriction. Calorie restriction itself is thought to improve health and longevity primarily through autophagy.
Here, researchers look at autophagy in the context of neurodegenerative conditions. ...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 7, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
The Chemistry Clicked: Two NIGMS-Funded Researchers Receive Nobel Prize
Since its creation in 1962, NIGMS has supported the work of the recipients of 94 Nobel Prizes—44 in physiology or medicine and 50 in chemistry. NIGMS-funded investigators perform cutting-edge basic research that is foundational to understanding normal life processes and disease. Such important breakthroughs in chemistry and biology often fuel more focused research that, years later, leads to important medical advances or products such as medicines or biotechnology tools.
Credit: Niklas Elmehed.
The most recent NIGMS-supported Nobel laureates are Carolyn R. Bertozzi, Ph.D., the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor in...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - December 7, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Chrissa Chverchko Tags: Being a Scientist Chemistry, Biochemistry and Pharmacology Tools and Techniques Cool Tools/Techniques Nobel Prize Profiles Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, November 28th 2022
This study explored whether determining the gain or loss of specific taxa represent a more precise metric of healthy/unhealthy aging than summary microbiome statistics, such as diversity and uniqueness. We analyzed microbiome diversity and four measures of microbiome uniqueness in 21,000 gut microbiomes for their relationship with aging and health. We show that diversity and uniqueness measures are not synonymous; uniqueness is not a uniformly desirable feature of the aging microbiome, nor is it an accurate biomarker of healthy aging. Different measures of uniqueness show different associations with diversity and with mark...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 27, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Prodrugs As a Useful Approach to Targeting Distinctive Aspects of Cancer Metabolism
The goal of cancer research should be to produce a robust, highly effective universal cancer therapy, or as close to universal as possible. One treatment that can be deployed for every type of cancer, with a very good chance of inducing remission. Attempting to tackle cancer subtypes one by one based on their genetic peculiarities is simply not efficient enough to produce meaningful progress in our lifetimes. Further, most cancers are subject to high mutation rates, and in a sizable fraction of patients will prove to be quite capable of evolving immunity to any therapy that targets a non-essential aspect of cancer biochemi...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 23, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, November 21st 2022
In this study researchers added new insight, showing that high-intensity aerobic exercise, which derives its energy from sugar, can reduce the risk of metastatic cancer by as much as 72%. If so far the general message to the public has been 'be active, be healthy', now researchers can explain how aerobic activity can maximize the prevention of the most aggressive and metastatic types of cancer.
The study combined an animal model in which mice were trained under a strict exercise regimen, with data from healthy human volunteers examined before and after running. The human data, obtained from an epidemiological study ...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 20, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Does the Gut Microbiome Contribute to Frailty via Oxidative Stress?
The challenge in understanding degenerative aging is at this point less a matter of identifying mechanisms, and more a matter of establishing which of the many mechanisms involved in every specific aspect of aging are actually important. Cellular biochemistry is a complex interconnected web, and it is very hard to make changes to just one mechanism in isolation, so as to establish exactly its contribution. Now that biotechnology has advanced to the point at which near every biological mechanism is a viable target for intervention, it matters whether or not the research and development communities focus on the right targets...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 16, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Science Snippet: ATP ’s Amazing Power
ATP (yellow) powering a protein (blue) that moves material within cells and helps them divide. Credit: Charles Sindelar, Yale University.
Just as electricity powers almost every modern gadget, the tiny molecule adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is the major source of energy for organisms’ biochemical reactions. ATP stores energy in the chemical bonds that hold its three phosphate groups together—the triphosphate part of its name. In the human body, ATP powers processes such as cell signaling, muscle contraction, nerve firing, and DNA and RNA synthesis. Because our cells are constantly using and producing ATP, each of us t...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - November 16, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Chrissa Chverchko Tags: Cells Chemistry, Biochemistry and Pharmacology Molecular Structures Cellular Processes Science Snippet Source Type: blogs
Klotho Promotes Autophagy to Slow Vascular Calcification
Klotho is one of the few robustly determined longevity genes capable of altering life span in both directions in mice. A reduced expression of klotho shortens life span, while increased klotho levels lengthen life. Klotho has been shown to improve cognitive function, but investigation to date has suggested that it primarily functions in the kidney, and that kidney function mediates effects elsewhere in the body.
Today's open access paper is focused instead on the relationship between klotho and vascular calcification. Prior research on this topic has focused on the relationship between klotho and FGF23, but here the...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 15, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, November 14th 2022
In this study, we show that TXNIP is vital for the cell fate choice when cells are challenged by various stress signals. Furthermore, prolonged IGF1 treatment leads to the establishment of a premature senescence phenotype characterized by a unique senescence network signature. Combined IGF1/TXNIP-induced premature senescence can be associated with a typical secretory inflammatory phenotype that is mediated by STAT3/IL-1A signaling. Finally, these mechanistic insights might help with the understanding of basic aspects of IGF1-related pathologies in the clinical setting.
Investigating the Ability of Type 2 Diabetes...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 13, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Soluble Phosphorylated Tau as a Target in Alzheimer's Disease and other Tauopathies
The primary thrust of Alzheimer's research and clinical development of therapies remains the targeting of amyloid-β and tau aggregates. The failure to produce meaningful benefits in patients, even given reductions in amyloid-β and tau, is not shifting the focus of most research groups to other entirely different approaches, but rather to question whether the complexity of amyloid-β and tau biochemistry means that the wrong locations or types of these molecules were targeted by the immunotherapies used to date in human trials.
For optimal design of anti-amyloid-β (Aβ) and anti-tau clinical trials, we need to b...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 11, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, November 7th 2022
In conclusion, the national prevalence of dementia and MCI in 2016 found in this cross-sectional study was similar to that of other US-based studies.
Clearing Microglia Reverses Age-Related Disruption of Sleeping Patterns in Mice
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2022/11/clearing-microglia-reverses-age-related-disruption-of-sleeping-patterns-in-mice/
Microglia are innate immune cells of the central nervous system. They are analogous to macrophages in the rest of the body, but undertake additional duties relating to the function of neurons and in brain tissue. Microglia become overly active and inflamm...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 6, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
