DiscoveR8 - News for Life Science

11

Sharp-witted elderly shed insight on dementia

sea-maid submitted, created time 4 days 20 hours (www.msnbc.msn.com)

People who manage to keep a razor-sharp memory well into their 80s appear to have fewer fiber-like tangles of a protein linked with Alzheimer's than those who age normally, U.S. researchers said on Sunday.

13

Spanish scientists create extra-long-lived mice

piggy submitted, created time 5 days 20 hours (www.enews20.com)

Spanish scientists have created "super-mice" that are cancer-resistant and live up to forty percent longer, media reported Friday.

The mice were subjected to genetic engineering by researchers from the cancer research centre CNIO and Valencia University.

The key to the experiment was an enzyme called telomerase, which lengthens chromosome ends known as telomeres.

Telomerase allows cells to keep dividing and is believed to increase longevity, but it also heightens the risk of cancer

12

GlaxoSmithKline's customized "red wine" drug potent in mice

piggy submitted, created time 2 weeks 2 days (www.reuters.com)

LONDON (Reuters) - A drug in development that mimics a health-boosting compound found in red wine may be a powerful weapon in the fight against obesity and diabetes, researchers said on Tuesday.

A study of mice showed that the GlaxoSmithKline drug SRT1720 was about a thousand times more potent than resveratrol in activating an enzyme that helped the animals burn more energy and lower their insulin and glucose levels

10

Stem cells: A new pathway for stem cell aging and renewal

sea-maid submitted, created time 2 weeks 4 days (www.nature.com)

Stem cells have the potential for self-renewal and are therefore able to persist throughout life in a diverse range of tissues. However, their self-renewing capacity declines with age. What mechanisms are responsible for the differences between young and aging stem cells? The discovery of a novel pathway involving high-mobility group A2 (HMGA2), INK4A and ARF has recently provided exciting new insights.

7

Hmga directs tumor suppressors in stem cell aging

jerry submitted, created time 1 month 3 days (www.cell.com)

Stem cells persist throughout life in diverse tissues by undergoing self-renewing divisions. Self-renewal capacity declines with age, partly because of increasing expression of the tumor suppressor p16Ink4a. We discovered that the Hmga2 transcriptional regulator is highly expressed in fetal neural stem cells but that expression declines with age. This decrease is partly caused by the increasing expression of let-7b microRNA, which is known to target HMGA2

7

Hmga2 Promotes Neural Stem Cell Self-Renewal in Young but Not Old Mice by Reducing p16Ink4a and p19Arf Expression

sea-maid submitted, created time 1 month 4 days (www.sciencedirect.com)

Stem cells persist throughout life in diverse tissues by undergoing self-renewing divisions. Self-renewal capacity declines with age, partly because of increasing expression of the tumor suppressor p16Ink4a. We discovered that the Hmga2 transcriptional regulator is highly expressed in fetal neural stem cells but that expression declines with age. This decrease is partly caused by the increasing expression of let-7b microRNA, which is known to target HMGA2

20

Centrosome misorientation reduces stem cell division during aging

sea-maid submitted, created time 1 month 6 days (www.nature.com)

Asymmetric division of adult stem cells generates one self-renewing stem cell and one differentiating cell, thereby maintaining tissue homeostasis. A decline in stem cell function has been proposed to contribute to tissue aging, although the underlying mechanism is poorly understood. Here we show that changes in the stem cell orientation with respect to the niche during aging contribute to the decline in spermatogenesis in the male germ line of Drosophila. Throughout the cell cycle, centrosomes in germline stem cells (GSCs) are oriented within their niche and this ensures asymmetric division

15

Drinking and the Shrinking Brain

sea-maid submitted, created time 1 month 1 week (voices.washingtonpost.com)

Some researchers went looking for evidence that low to moderate alcohol consumption could stave off brain problems. That is not what they found.

Nobody wants to think about their brain's shrinking. But our brains do so as we
age, by about two percent every ten year. According to a new article in the Annals of Neurology, that figure is higher for people who drink.

The authors request that people remember that the correlation that was found is between drinking and decreases in brain size, not brain function.

8

Rethinking the Wrinkling: Key Genes Cause Aging

jerry submitted, created time 2 months 1 day (www.sciam.com)

Scientists may have been thinking about the causes of aging all wrong. Instead of being the result of an accumulation of genetic and cellular damage, new evidence suggests that aging may occur when genetic programs for development go awry.

7

Novel anti-cancer mechanism found in long-lived rodents

sea-maid submitted, created time 2 months 2 days (esciencenews.com)

Biologists at the University of Rochester have found that small-bodied rodents with long lifespans have evolved a previously unknown anti-cancer mechanism that appears to be different from any anticancer mechanisms employed by humans or other large mammals. The findings are published in today's issue of Aging Cell. Understanding this mechanism may help prevent cancer in humans because many human cancers originate from stem cells and similar mechanisms may regulate stem cell division.

8

Longevity, cancer and diet connected: New research in worms could apply to humans

sea-maid submitted, created time 2 months 2 days (esciencenews.com)

The genes TOR and pha4/FoxA have been linked to both cancer and the aging process in C. elegans, and it appears that the results might apply to humans as well.

8

First-ever trial proves exercise helps memory

sea-maid submitted, created time 2 months 2 weeks (esciencenews.com)

West Australian health experts are urging older people to get active after proving for the first time that just twenty minutes of activity each day can prevent memory deterioration. In a world-first, a team from the WA Centre for Health and Ageing (WACHA) based at the Western Australian Institute for Medical Research (WAIMR) has shown that regular physical activity can lead to a lasting improvement in memory function.

10

Moisturizers Up Skin Cancer

kavin submitted, created time 3 months 6 days (www.medscape.com)

Four commonly used moisturizers promoted skin cancers in mouse studies.

Mice are not men. But the unexpected finding suggests that these — and perhaps other products — may not be as safe as they're thought to be.

The moisturizers tested in the study were Dermabase, Dermovan (a wholesale-only product discontinued in 2006), Eucerin Original Moisturizing Cream, and Vanicream.

In a mouse model of sun-related skin cancer, frequent application of each product resulted in more skin tumors and faster tumor growth, says study leader Allan H

9

Long Live the Liver

sea-maid submitted, created time 3 months 1 week (sciencenow.sciencemag.org)

Humans have been trying to outrun old age for millennia, and new research might give us a step on the Grim Reaper. Scientists have prevented age-related liver decline in mice by restoring a key protein that helps the organ trash used proteins. It's not exactly the fountain of youth, but the findings could shed further light on the biological mechanisms of aging.....

9

Aging May Be Controlled by Brake and Accelerator Genes

sea-maid submitted, created time 3 months 4 weeks (www.sciam.com)

Can we tweak certain genes to stave off the aging process—or, conversely, to speed it up? New research indicates that it may one day be possible.

For the present, the current discovery helps to expalin something that the prevailing theory of aging--the idea that our bodies wear out because of errors accumulating in our DNA--cannot: why different species have different lifespans.