Aging gracefully requires taking out the trash

User rating: 5 / 5 after 11 vote(s)

Top: The image shows the brain of a normal 15-day old fly. Bottom: Damaged proteins tagged for degradation (bright red stain) start to accumulate in the brains of 15-day old flies in which the process of autophagy has been suppressed. These flies liv ...
Top: The image shows the brain of a normal, 15-day old fly. Bottom: Damaged proteins tagged for degradation (bright, red stain) start to accumulate in the brains of 15-day old flies in which the process of autophagy has been suppressed. These flies live only half as long as their normal counterparts. Credit: Tim Finley

Suppressing a cellular cleanup-mechanism known as autophagy can accelerate the accumulation of protein aggregates that leads to neural degeneration. In an upcoming issue of Autophagy, scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies report for the first time that the opposite is true as well: Boosting autophagy in the nervous system of fruit flies prevented the age-dependent accumulation of cellular damage in neurons and promoted longevity.


Full story »
All News summaries from General Science news
All News summaries for December 14, 2007

Female concave-eared frogs draw mates with ultrasonic calls

May 11, 2008 | User rating: not rated yet
Most female frogs don’t call; most lack or have only rudimentary vocal cords. A typical female selects a mate from a chorus of males and then –silently – signals her beau. But the female concave-eared torrent ...

Weddings boost Shark's fin consumption in Singapore: report

May 10, 2008 | User rating: not rated yet
Shark's fin consumption more than doubled in Singapore last year from 2006, with demand driven by an economic boom and an increase in wedding celebrations, a report said Saturday.

A crash course in true political science

May 10, 2008 | User rating: not rated yet
(AP) -- Daniel Suson has a doctorate in astrophysics and has worked on the superconducting super collider and a forthcoming NASA probe. Now he's heading back to school to take on an even trickier task - getting ...

Captive breeding to save Kashmir's rare red deer

May 09, 2008 | User rating: not rated yet
Kashmir's endangered red deer faces extinction without a captive breeding programme that will start this summer in the scenic Himalayan region, Indian wildlife officials said Friday.

Elusive protein protects malaria parasite from heme

May 09, 2008 | User rating: not rated yet
Researchers at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech have identified Heme Detoxification Protein, a unique protein encoded in the malaria genome that represents a potential target for developing ...
Goto Archive PhysOrg Forum Goto Archive Video Goto Archive Editorials Goto Archive Free Magazines Goto Archive Newsletter

News Archive