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Category: life extension – Page 60

Researchers reveal how aging impairs antitumor activity of CD8⁺ T cells

A research team from the Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health (SINH) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has revealed that aging specifically impairs the generation of CD8+ tissue resident memory T cells (TRM) and thus compromises the antitumor defensive activity of aged CD8+ T cells. The study is published in Nature Aging.

With the , the risk of developing cancer significantly increases. In recent years, it has been reported that immune aging has an important impact on tumor development. Immune aging is a degenerative change in the immune system that occurs with aging, leading to a decline in and ultimately triggering diseases including tumors.

Within the immune system, CD8+ T cells are the main defensive adaptive immune cells protecting against . However, the mechanism by which aging impairs the antitumor response of CD8+ T cells was not previously understood.

Molecular and genetic insights into human ovarian aging from single-nuclei multi-omics analyses

The molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying ovarian aging are incompletely understood. Here the authors provide single-nuclei RNA and ATAC-seq of human ovarian tissue from four young and four reproductively aged donors, revealing coordinated transcriptomic and epigenomic changes across cell types and highlighting a role for mTOR signaling in reproductive aging.

Scientists can tweak gene to reduce brain aging and extend lifespans by ‘30%’

In case you thought science was going to take a day off, researchers have just figured out a way of reversing brain aging – in fruit flies, but still.

They previously did something similar in lab mice, claiming to “reverse and repair” damage done by Alzheimer’s disease. The brain is a fascinating thing: it behaves weirdly after midnight, performs a magical reset while sleeping to “save memories,” and automatically corrects spelling errors even when you don’t see them yourself. Whatever next, health experts?!

When a common type of protein builds up in the brain, it stops cells from getting rid of “unnecessary or dysfunctional components,” i.e., waste.

Labeling cell particles with barcodes

Cell-to-cell communication through nanosized particles, working as messengers and carriers, can now be analyzed in a whole new way, thanks to a new method involving CRISPR gene-editing technology. The particles, known as small extracellular vesicles (sEVs), play an important role in the spread of disease and as potential drug carriers. The newly developed system, named CIBER, enables thousands of genes to be studied at once, by labeling sEVs with a kind of RNA “barcode.” With this, researchers hope to find what factors are involved in sEV release from host cells. This will help advance our understanding of basic sEV biology and may aid in the development of new treatments for diseases, such as cancer.

Your body “talks” in more ways than one. Your cells communicate with each other, enabling your different parts to function as one team. However, there are still many mysteries surrounding this process. Extracellular vesicles (EVs), small particles released by cells, were previously thought to be useless waste. However, in recent decades they have been dramatically relabeled as very important particles (VIPs), due to their association with various diseases, including cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and age-related diseases.

Small EVs have been found to play a key role in cell-to-cell communication. Depending on what “cargo” they carry from their host cell (which can include RNA, proteins and lipids), sEVs can help maintain normal tissue functions or can further the spread of diseases. Because of this, researchers are interested in how sEVs form and are released. However, separating sEVs from other molecules and identifying the factors which lead to their release is both difficult and time-consuming with conventional methods. So, a team in Japan has developed a new technique.

Keeping a cell’s nucleolus compact may be key to fighting aging

The secret to cellular youth may depend on keeping the nucleolus—a condensed structure inside the nucleus of a cell—small, according to Weill Cornell Medicine investigators. The findings were elucidated in yeast, a model organism famous for making bread and beer and yet surprisingly similar to humans on the cellular level.

The study, published Nov. 25 in Nature Aging, may lead to new longevity treatments that could extend human lifespan. It also establishes a mortality timer that reveals how long a cell has left before it dies.

As people get older, they are more likely to develop health conditions, such as cancer, and .

Ed Boyden — The Future of Humanity | Xapiens Symposium

This is the first symposium of Xapiens at MIT — “The Future of Homo Sapiens”

The future of our species will be majorly influenced by the technical advancements and ethical paradigm shifts over the next several decades. Artificial intelligence, neural enhancement, gene editing, solutions for aging and interplanetary travel, and other emerging technologies are bringing sci-fi’s greatest ideas to reality.

Sponsored by the MIT media lab and the MIT mcgovern institute of brain research.

Full Agenda:

- Openings remarks from Joe Paradiso — https://youtu.be/9bG40ySgE8I
A.W Dreyfoos Professor and Associate Academic Head of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT Director of the Responsive Environments Group.

- Pattie Maes — https://youtu.be/b-16PW9RvJc.

Continue reading “Ed Boyden — The Future of Humanity | Xapiens Symposium” | >

How tiny droplets can deform ice: Findings show potential for cryopreservation and food engineering

When water freezes slowly, the location where water turns into ice—known as the freezing front—forms a straight line. Researchers from the University of Twente showed how droplets that interact with such a freezing front cause surprising deformations of this front. These new insights were published in Physical Review Letters and show potential for applications in cryopreservation and food engineering techniques.

When water freezes, it is often thought of as a predictable, solid block forming layer by layer. But what happens if the progressing freezing front encounters or ? Researchers from the University of Twente have explored this question, discovering that droplets can cause surprising deformations in the way ice forms.

Early adult binge drinking has lasting impact on aging brain in mice

In a new work, a team from the University of Pennsylvania tracked the impact of alcohol consumption from the age of 20 on brain health and came to disappointing conclusions.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Binge drinking in early adults can lead to long-lasting and potentially permanent dysregulation in the brain, according to a new study in mice, led by researchers at Penn State. They found that neurons, cells that transmit information in the brain via electrical and chemical signals, showed changes following binge drinking were similar in many ways to those seen with cognitive decline.

These findings, published in the journal Neurobiology of Aging, reveal that binge drinking early in life may have lasting impacts that are predictive of future health issues, like Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, the researchers said. The work could inform the development of therapeutics to help combat these changes — particularly in aging populations who may have given up alcohol decades earlier, according to Nikki Crowley, director of the Penn State Neuroscience Institute at University Park, Huck Early Career Chair in Neurobiology and Neural Engineering, assistant professor of biology in the Eberly College of Science, and the leader of the research team.

“We know from previous studies that there are immediate effects of binge drinking on the brain, but we didn’t have any sense of if these changes were long-lasting, or reversible over time,” said Crowley, who is also an assistant professor of biomedical engineering and of pharmacology. “We were interested in understanding if binge drinking during early adulthood may have lasting consequences that are not revealed until later in life — even if drinking had stopped for a very long period of time. This allows us to consider the effects of alcohol on an individual’s holistic health, in terms of their entire life history.”