As some of you are aware, one of the reasons I decided
to leave Aeiveos Sciences Group in 1997 was because of
the analysis we did that indicated that the forthcoming
use of gene-chip technologies would make the research
we were doing at the time 10-100 times cheaper in the not
so distant future (as the comedians say, timing is everything).
The first paper using the chips came out in late 1999
but my conversations with Rich Weindruch (one of the
authors) indicated that at that time they were still
pretty expensive to use for day-to-day research.
I ran across this paper today:
"The effects of aging on gene expression in the hypothalamus
and cortex of mice", Jiang CH, Tsien JZ, Schultz PG, Hu Y
PNAS 98(4):1930-4 (13 Feb 2001).
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:80/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11172053&dopt=Abstract
What I find interesting about it is the comment regarding
the upregulation of many proteases. What could be causing
this is the fact that lipofuscin accululates with age,
particularly in the brain. So lets assume we have a
gradual accumulation of "nondigestable" material and the
way the gene regulation network responds to that is to
increase the activity of the cellular protein degradation
apparatus. But lets say the degradation is moderately
non-specific and starts degrading the good proteins
along with the bad proteins. The net result is that
your brain becomes "starved" for proteins it needs for
maintenance, e.g. glucose transporters & mitochondrial
proteins as well proteins necessary for normal function,
e.g. neurotransmitter manufacturing enzymes. Now, what
is good is that this potentially means there are interventions
that could help such as protease inhibitor drugs as well as drugs
that influence regulatory signals to increase overall protein
production.
Also worth noting, is the use of "high density oligonucleotide
arrays", the fact that the paper had only 4 authors and
the work is being funded by Novartis, pretty much matching
my expectations from several years ago.
Prediction: over the next 5 years you will see this type
of information turn into a flood.
Also of Note:
"Do 'smart' mice feel more pain, or are they just better learners?"
Tang, Y., Shimizu, E, Tsien, JZ.
Nature Neuroscience 4(5):453-4 (May 2001).
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:80/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11319546&dopt=Abstract
I don't have a access to this article, but Anders or someone
with University access might want to clue us in its general contents.
Robert
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