Genetics Of The Aging Brain

Fight Aging!

Do you want to live a longer life in good health? Simple practices can make some difference, such as exercise or calorie restriction. But over the long haul all that really matters is progress in medicine: building new classes of therapy to repair and reverse the known root causes of aging. The sooner these treatments arrive, the more lives will be saved. Find out how to help »

(From Medical News Today). You may recall that it wasn't all that long ago that researchers announced results from a study of changes in gene expression with age in the human kidney. Now we have more of the same, but for the aging brain. Researchers "found a pattern of age-related changes in the expression of hundreds of genes. ... One common theory of aging holds that damage is done to DNA and proteins by "free-radicals" (highly reactive molecules produced by the metabolic activity of mitochondria). It predicts that more metabolically active tissues will show greater age-related differential gene expression. The results of this study support this theory since the more metabolically active cortex shows a greater reduction in gene activity." Use it more and it tends to wear out faster.

Link: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=28451