Individual and additive effects of vitamin D, omega-3 and exercise on DNA methylation clocks of biological aging in older adults from the DO-HEALTH trial
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Longevity Snapshot #5 — Reviewing a trial which shows that a combination of Omega 3, Vitamin D and Exercise slows down biological aging in older adults according to 4 epigenetic clocks.
A stressful life can leave marks on our genetic code, some of which can even be passed on to our children. A study now reveals how the biological impact of trauma on a mother persists long after the violent acts themselves have passed.
The international team of researchers demonstrate the physical mechanisms behind intergenerational trauma in humans, explaining why people with a family history of adversity are more prone to mental health conditions like anxiety and depression, despite not having experienced the adverse events themselves.
The researchers analyzed DNA collected from 48 Syrian families across three generations. These families included grandmothers or mothers who while pregnant had fled the 1982 siege and massacre in Hama or the 2011 armed uprising – both part of the ongoing Syrian civil war.
Cow D lived on a dairy farm in New Zealand. The animal looked like the typical black-and-white cow farmers raise for milk, except for one thing: Researchers had outfitted Cow D with an artificial fistula—a hole offering them a way to reach the microbes inhabiting the animal’s bathtub-size stomach. But it’s what happened next that offers a porthole into the global debate over the use of genetic data.
In the spring of 2009, Samantha Noel, then a doctoral researcher at Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand, reached into Cow D’s rumen and plucked out a strain of Lachnospiraceae bacterium, later dubbed ND2006. Another team of geneticists sequenced the microbe’s complete set of genes, or genome, and uploaded the information, which was then shared with GenBank, a public database run by the US National Institutes of Health. If genes are the book of life, then this process was like adding a digital copy to an online library. In policy circles, these lines of code go by another name: digital sequence information, or DSI.
Vertical columns How the Brain Maps Jaw Movements: A Hidden Architecture of Motion.
Our brains contain intricate maps that guide every voluntary movement we make, from reaching out to grab a cup to the delicate motions involved in speaking or chewing. But how exactly are these maps organized, and what role do different types of brain cells play in shaping them?
A new study dives deep into the orofacial motor maps—the brain’s blueprint for controlling jaw movements—revealing a surprising level of organization. Researchers used optogenetics, a technique that activates specific neurons with light, to map out how different classes of excitatory neurons contribute to jaw motion in mice. What they found was remarkable: rather than a single unified map, the motor cortex is divided into distinct, genetically defined modules, each governing jaw movement from different brain regions, including sensory, motor, and premotor areas.
These modules don’t act in isolation. When one was stimulated, activity rippled across the brain, converging in the primary motor cortex, the region that directly controls movement. What’s more, when the mice learned new motor skills—such as refining their licking motion—some of these modules expanded, adapting to support the learned behavior.
This research suggests that voluntary movement isn’t just dictated by a single command center. Instead, a network of specialized cell groups collaborates across different parts of the brain, dynamically adjusting as we learn new motor skills. Understanding this fine-tuned motor map could have implications for treating movement disorders or even advancing brain-computer interfaces in the future.
A new structural blueprint paves the way for improved targeting of cancer cells, particularly those with BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations. DNA repair proteins function as the body’s molecular editors, continuously identifying and correcting damage to our genetic code. A longstanding challenge in cancer research has been understanding how cancer cells exploit one such protein—polymerase theta (Pol-theta)—to support their survival. Now, scientists at Scripps Research have captured the first high-resolution images of Pol-theta in action, shedding light on its role in cancer development.
Superlongevity via epigenetic reprogramming. 🏆
Life Biosciences:
“If the FDA approves its application, the company will repeat the methods from the mouse and monkey experiments, Rosenzweig-Lipson said. Scientists will inject volunteers’ eyes with Yamanaka factors that can be turned off or on with the antibiotic doxycycline, Rosenzweig-Lipson said. The hope is that the cells in people’s damaged optic nerves will grow more youthful at an epigenetic level, and their vision will improve.”
Can reprogramming our genes make us young again? A breakthrough in longevity research may be nearing its first human trials.
The eye protein rhodopsin of the Greenland shark was found to have amino acid variations that made them more adept at processing blue-light wavelengths – a feature that is advantageous when living in the dim deep ocean waters.
“These genomic analyses offer new insights into the molecular basis of the exceptional longevity of the Greenland shark and highlight potential genetic mechanisms that could inform future research into longevity,” scientists wrote in the study.
An arms race is unfolding in our cells: Transposons, also known as jumping genes or mobile genetic elements as they can replicate and reinsert themselves in the genome, threaten the cell’s genome integrity by triggering DNA rearrangements and causing mutations. Host cells, in turn, protect their genome using intricate defense mechanisms that stop transposons from jumping.
Now, for the first time, a retrotransposon has been caught in action inside a cell: Refining cryo-Electron Tomography (cryo-ET) techniques, scientists imaged the retrotransposon copia in the egg chambers of the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster at sub-nanometer resolution. The paper is published in the journal Cell.
Among the international team of scientists achieving this detailed visualization are three scientists with Vienna BioCenter ties: Sven Klumpe, currently in the laboratory of Jürgen Plitzko at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, will join IMBA and IMP to build a group as a Joint Fellow; Julius Brennecke, a Senior Group Leader at IMBA, the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences; and Kirsten Senti, staff scientist in the Brennecke group. Also involved in this collaboration is the group of Martin Beck at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt.