The trigger mechanism of aging
Russian scientists have revealed the link between old age, cancer and inflammation
Russian and foreign scientists have discovered that one of the genes in our DNA, HMGB2, and its associated protein is the "key" to triggering cellular mechanisms associated with the development of cancer and the negative effects of aging, according to an article published in the Journal of Cell Biology (Aird et al., HMGB2 orchestrates the chromatin landscape of senescence-associated secretory phenotype gene loci).
"When cells begin to age, two interrelated phenomena occur, one of which helps our body to avoid the appearance of tumors, and the second at the same time causes cells to produce molecules that lead to the development of inflammation, which, on the contrary, contributes to the development of cancer. We have found the point in the architecture of the protein "packaging" of DNA, which contains the answer to this paradox," said Rugang Zhang from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (in a press release from the Wistar Institute Key Protein Implicated in Negative Side Effects of Senescence – VM).
Zhang and his colleagues, including Russian geneticists from Kazan Federal University, have found a possible key to suppressing problems associated with the onset of old age and the inability to renew human body cells in adult years of life by studying the interaction of genes and proteins that control the "readability" of genes and non-coding DNA sites.
Embryo cells and embryonic stem cells are virtually immortal from the point of view of biology – they can live almost indefinitely in an adequate habitat, and divide an unlimited number of times. In contrast, adult body cells gradually lose their ability to divide after 40-50 division cycles, entering the aging phase.
Why do cells do this? As scientists believe today, in this way cells protect themselves and the body as a whole from the development of cancer, stopping division at a time when the probability of mutations in their genome reaches a certain critical point.
Aging, as scientists say, is accompanied by many changes in the vital activity of the cell, which actually turn it off from the normal functioning of the body. The accumulation of such "elderly" cells, as scientists believe today, is the cause of the development of characteristic physiological changes associated with the onset of old age.
Russian and foreign scientists have found out that the key to these changes, and the release of a large number of inflammatory substances by "elderly cells", is the protein and the HMGB2 gene. This protein plays a key role in the "preparation" of DNA for life in old age, twisting the strands of the genetic code into characteristic circles and rings that prevent the reading of genes associated with division and reproduction.
In addition to these genes, as the experiments of the authors of the article have shown, HMGB2, for reasons not yet clarified, prevents such "twisting" of DNA into rings in those areas where genes associated with inflammatory processes are located. If the work of HMGB2 is suppressed, as scientists did in their experiments, then the aged cells no longer "poison" the life of the surrounding substances that provoke inflammation and attract the attention of the immune system to the tissue where such cells are contained.
This fact, according to the authors of the article, suggests that some of the negative features of aging can be eliminated without suppressing the anti-cancer effect of the retirement of some cells.
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01.11.2016