MOLECULAR AND CELULLAR MEDICINE ADVANCES = ETERNAL YOUTH?
href="http://www.biospace.com/gls_detail.cfm?t..."> expressed in the form of RNA at one particular moment. In this experiment a team of scientists from the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation and the Scripps Research Institute took a few cells from two children ages 7 and 9, two 37 years old, three people 90 or more years old , and again three children affected with progeria, isolated the RNAs and did the microchip scanning.
They compared the activity of more than 6,000 genes and found that there is a group of 15 genes whose activity decreased from on age group to the following. The decrease in activity was between 3-fold and 12-fold between youth and middle age, and even further between middle age and old age. Similar results were obtained in an experiment done with mice. What is important is that the function of those genes is to prevent cells from dividing if they have suffered mutations, thus, its low expression leads to the accumulation of faulty cells in the body and in consequence to impair the ability of the different organs of the body to function appropriately.
Since by stating that with age a group of genes ceases to functions appropriately, what we are saying is that aging is a genetic disease, we have to think about how to cure it.
Since we are talking about genes, if you have followed this series of articles, you are thinking that the cure must be related to gene therapy and you are probably right, thus I refer you to it. And I must indicate that to the problems mentioned there, we have to add those related to the inconvenience of manipulating not one but a set of genes. And not in one but in all of the cells of the body. Perhaps, 25 or 50 years from now the problem could be solved in uterus. In the case of telomerase, however, it is important to point out that they have identified a portion of the molecule that could be the target for its inactivation in cancer or its activation in damaged cells.
The beautiful kid in the picture is a Venezuelan aborigine from a Yanomami tribe. They live in the southeastern part of the country.
In the next article, the last one of this series, I will talk about diet as a cure
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