Photo: Christopher Furlong/ / Getty Images
For: The opinion Posted Jan 15, 2023, 0:50 am EST
Mankind has been looking for a way to stop aging and a recent study shows that it can not only be stopped, but this process can also be reversedor natural to living beings.
A 13-year international study led by Harvard Medical School shows for the first time that degradation of the way DNA is organized and regulated -what is known as epigenetics- can promote aging of an organism, but restoring it can reverse it.
The work, the results of which were published in the journal “Cell”, demonstrates that a failure in epigenetic information causes the aging of mice and that restoring the integrity of the epigenome reverses those signs of aging.
“We believe that ours is the first study to show that epigenetic change is the main driver of aging in mammals,” says the paper’s lead author, David Sinclair, Professor of Genetics at the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School and Co-Director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Research in the Biology of Aging.
The authors say that since it is easier to manipulate the molecules that control epigenetic processes than it is to reverse DNA mutations, the work points to new pathways focused on epigenetics rather than genetics to prevent or treat age-related damage.
“We hope that these findings transform our way of viewing the aging process and addressing the treatment of diseases associated with it”, says Jae-Hyun Yang, co-author of the study and a genetics researcher at the Sinclair laboratory.
tests on mice
The team’s main experiment consisted of create temporary, fast-healing breaks in DNA of laboratory mice.
These cuts mimicked the continuous, low-grade breaks that mammalian cells experience on a daily basis in response to factors such as breathing, exposure to sunlight and cosmic rays, or contact with certain chemicals.
In the study, to check whether aging is a consequence of this process, the researchers accelerated the number of breaks to simulate life in fast forward.
The scientists noted that as the mice lost their youthful epigenetic function, began to look and act like old people. They observed an increase in biomarkers that indicate aging. The cells lost their identity as muscle or skin cells, for example. Tissue function was weakened. The organs were failing.
Compared with untreated mice born at the same time, the modified mice had aged significantly more.
Next, the researchers mice were given gene therapy that reversed the epigenetic changes they had caused.
“It is like restart a computer that malfunctions,” Sinclair explains.
The therapy delivered a trio of genes – Oct4, Sox2 and Klf4, jointly called OSK – that are active in stem cells and can help rewind mature cells to a previous state.
Organs and tissues of modified mice they regained a youthful state.
The therapy “set in motion an epigenetic program that led cells to restore the epigenetic information they had when they were youngSinclair said. “It’s a permanent reset.”
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