Battling "Cellular Littering" Critical for a Longer Life
You know those ads that tell you littering is bad? Those guys aren't messing around. Recent research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine have demonstrated that incorrectly made proteins left lying around your cells don't just make the place untidy - they give you Alzheimer's and kill you.
Every cell in your body is a protein-producing machine. The all-important DNA, which you may have heard of, is just a blueprint for manufacturing these massive molecules to perform functions throughout the structure. When these proteins break down or malfunction the cell's garbage-disposal system, the lysosome, gathers them up and digests them.
But as you age this cleaning process gets less and less effective and an increasing number of useless or harmfully broken proteins get in the way of healthy cell function. Turning it into an unhealthy, and eventually dead, cell.
Associate Professor Ana Maria Cuervo and colleagues dispatched a genetic housemaids into the cells of specially engineered mice - these rodents were born with more than the normal amount of lysosome receptor sites, the idea being that enough will continue to function into old age (as well as presumably providing the spickest, spannest cells ever in youth). The experiments were successful, with the livers of octogenarian-equivalent mice working as well as in their childhood.
It's important to note that this research only increases longevity by increasing the number of receptor sites - these sites still break down, and there's an upper limit on how many you can have to begin with. Those who froth at the mouth about potential immortality will have to wait until someone works out how to stop them breaking down in the first place.
Still, maintaining organ function is enough for us - after all, who wouldn't mind living only to sixty if they could stay young the entire time?
Posted by Luke McKinney.
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