Fight Aging!

Ouroboros recently pointed out a fairly new blog on aging and longevity science that I had failed to notice in my wanderings. In my defense, most of the tools for discovering new blog content are so clogged with autospam that it's a wonder anyone can find anything.

I just learned of an excellent new blog - @ging, dedicated to "scientific findings on aging and its underlying mechanisms" ... it’s bilingual in English and Spanish, with almost every article appearing in both languages. Authors Shaday and Layla Michan state their site's mission succinctly as follows: "This space is devoted to analyze and discuss the advances on aging research."

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The site has been up less than a month; so far, posts have dealt with a wide variety of subject, from demographics to genetics to molecular details of aging. The writing is concise and very readable, in both languages (so far as I can tell; my Spanish is functional but weak). Overall, I’m very favorably impressed. There’s also a great sidebar with links to recent articles in aging-related journals.

You might, for example, take a look at @ging on SIRT3:

SIRT3 is a protein of the sirtuin family that regulates deacetylation of mitochondrial proteins and which has been linked to human longevity. Although the lack of this protein dramatically increases the level of global mitochondrial acetylated proteins, [little] is known about the physiological function of this sirtuin. The first crystal structure of human SIRT3 was reported by the end of last year and during the first two months of the new decade important discoveries have been published regarding the role of SIRT3 in mammals.

Many of the mechanisms associated with the operation of our mitochondria appear to be important to the accumulation of age-related damage and resulting longevity. Mitochondria themselves may be the primary link between metabolism and longevity - the strong correlations between mitochondrial structure and life span between species supports that view, as does the evidence for the mitochondrial free radical theory of aging. The Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) approach to mitochondria in aging is to engineer away their contribution to degenerative aging. This could be achieved by replacing their DNA every few decades, by replacing just a few crucial genes on the same sort of timeframe, or by shifting some of the mitochondrial DNA into the cell nucleus. This is probably the closest of the SENS programs to some form of meaningful completion, but more work is yet needed.

While we are on the subject of sirtuins and mitochondria, I should also point out today's post from Ouroboros on SIRT3 and what researchers know of its role in mammalian biochemistry.