A way to counteract part of the process of growing old
Nov 5th 2011 | from the print edition
BIOLOGISTS have made a lot of progress in understanding ageing. They
have not, however, been able to do much about slowing it down.
Particular versions of certain genes have been shown to prolong life,
but that is no help to those who do not have them. A piece of work
reported in this week’s
Nature by Darren Baker
of the Mayo Clinic, in Minnesota, though, describes an extraordinary
result that points to a way the process might be ameliorated. Dr Baker
has shown—in mice, at least—that ageing body cells not only suffer
themselves, but also have adverse effects on otherwise healthy cells
around them. More significantly, he has shown that if such ageing cells
are selectively destroyed, these adverse effects go away.
The story starts with an observation, made a few years ago, that senescent cells often produce a molecule called P16
INK4A. Most body cells have an upper limit on the number of times they can divide—and thus multiply in number. P16
INK4A is part of the control mechanism that brings cell division to a halt when this limit is reached.
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