Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
From the search for the legendary Fountain of Youth, to the countless age-defying products available at stores all around the world, humanity’s obsession with looking and feeling young has inspired much research and product development over the years.
Now, Eduardo Moreno and colleagues from the Institute of Cell Biology at the University of Bern in Switzerland have conducted new research on fruit flies that could ultimately be adapted to extending human lifespans. Their findings appear in the peer-reviewed journal Cell.
The researchers explained that they developed a new method which extends the lifespan of one type of fly based on improved selection of the highest quality cells in their bodies.
“Our bodies are composed of several trillion cells, and during aging those cells accumulate random errors due to stress or external insults, like UV-light from the sun,” Moreno explained, noting that those errors affect cells at different times and with different intensities.
He added that “because some cells are more affected than others, we reasoned that selecting the less affected cells and eliminating the damaged ones could be a good strategy to maintain tissue health and therefore delay aging and prolong lifespan.”
In order to test that hypothesis, Moreno’s team used Drosophila melanogaster flies. First, they set out to determine which cells within the organs of those flies were healthier, then they found a gene which was activated in those cells that were deemed to be less healthy.
They dubbed that gene ahuizotl (azot) in honor of a mythological Aztec creature that selectively targeted fishing boats to protect the fish population of lakes, since it had a similar function – selectively targeting less fit cells to protect the integrity and health of the brain and other organs.
Each cell typically has two copies of this gene, but by adding a third, the study authors found that they were able to select better cells more efficiently. As a result of this enhanced cellular quality-control mechanism, the flies appeared to better maintain healthy tissue while aging slower and living longer – up to 60 percent longer than normal flies in some cases, according to the authors.
While creating these so-called Methuselah flies is novel, the research have important age-related implications for humans as well. Moreno’s team explains that since the gene azot is conserved in people, it opens up the possibility that selecting fitter or healthier cells within organs could one day be used as an anti-aging mechanism by preventing neurological and tissue degeneration.
“Having that gene is beneficial for the organism because it eliminates the cell that causes the problem,” Moreno told The Washington Post, noting that activating the gene “a good strategy to maintain tissue health and therefore delay aging and prolong lifespan… If we could do the same to a human who may live 80 years, it would be like living to 160 years old.”
He added that his team found that improved cell selection could be combined with other treatments, such as calorie restriction, to further increase the fly’s lifespan. Research from the NYU Langone Medical Center and the New York University School of Medicine published last November had found that calorie-restricting diet could slow down the aging process.
“Our study shows how calorie restriction practically arrests gene expression levels involved in the aging phenotype – how some genes determine the behavior of mice, people, and other mammals as they get old,” neuroscientist and senior investigator Dr. Stephen D. Ginsberg said. That study provided new evidence that diet can help delay “the effects of aging and age-related disease,” he added.
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