Aging and its 11 hippocampal genes

Aging is being quite extensively studied these days and here is another advance in the field. Pardo et al. (2017) looked at what happens in the hippocampus of 2-months old (young) and 28-months old (old) female rats. Hippocampus is a seahorse shaped structure no more than 7 cm in length and 4 g in weight situated at the level of your temples, deep in the brain, and absolutely necessary for memory.

First the researchers tested the rats in a classical maze test (Barnes maze) designed to assess their spatial memory performance. Not surprisingly, the old performed worse than the young.

Then, they dissected the hippocampi and looked at neurogenesis and they saw that the young rats had more newborn neurons than the old. Also, the old rats had more reactive microglia, a sign of inflammation. Microglia are small cells in the brain that are not neurons but serve very important functions.

After that, the researchers looked at the hippocampal transcriptome, meaning they looked at what proteins are being expressed there (I know, transcription is not translation, but the general assumption of transcriptome studies is that the amount of protein X corresponds to the amount of the RNA X). They found 210 genes that were differentially expressed in the old, 81 were upregulated and 129 were downregulated. Most of these genes are to be found in human too, 170 to be exact.

But after looking at male versus female data, at human and mouse aging data, the authors came up with 11 genes that are de-regulated (7 up- and 4 down-) in the aging hippocampus, regardless of species or gender. These genes are involved in the immune response to inflammation. More detailed, immune system activates microglia, which stays activated and this “prolonged microglial activation leads to the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines that exacerbate neuroinflammation, contributing to neuronal loss and impairment of cognitive function” (p. 17). Moreover, these 11 genes have been associated with neurodegenerative diseases and brain cancers.

These are the 11 genes: C3 (up), Cd74  (up), Cd4 (up), Gpr183 (up), Clec7a (up), Gpr34 (down), Gapt (down), Itgam (down), Itgb2 (up), Tyrobp (up), Pld4 (down).”Up” and “down” indicate the direction of deregulation: upregulation or downregulation.

I wish the above sentence was as explicitly stated in the paper as I wrote it so I don’t have to comb through their supplemental Excel files to figure it out. Other than that, good paper, good work. Gets us closer to unraveling and maybe undoing some of the burdens of aging, because, as the actress Bette Davis said, “growing old isn’t for the sissies”.

Reference: Pardo J, Abba MC, Lacunza E, Francelle L, Morel GR, Outeiro TF, Goya RG. (13 Jan 2017, Epub ahead of print). Identification of a conserved gene signature associated with an exacerbated inflammatory environment in the hippocampus of aging rats. Hippocampus, doi: 10.1002/hipo.22703. ARTICLE

By Neuronicus, 25 January 2017

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The FIRSTS: the discovery of the telomerase (1985)

Telomerase at work. Credit: Fatma Uzbas. License: CC BY-S.A. 3.0

A telomere is a genetic sequence (TTAGGG for vertebrates) that is repeated at the end of the chromosomes many thousands of times and serves as a protective cap that keep the chromosome stable and protected from degradation. Every time a cell divides, the telomere length shortens. This shortening had been linked to aging or, in other words, the shorter the telomere, the shorter the lifespan. But in some cells, like the germ cells, stem cells, or malignant cells, there is an enzyme that adds the telomere sequence back on the chromosome after the cell has divided.

The telomerase has been discovered in 1984 by Carol W. Greider and Elizabeth Blackburn in a protozoan (i.e. a unicellular eukaryotic organism) commonly found in puddles and ponds called Tetrahymena. I wanted to give a synopsis of their experiments, but who better to explain the work then the authors themselves? Here is a video of Dr. Blackburn herself explaining step by step in 20 minutes the rationale and the findings of the experiments for which she and Carol W. Greider received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2009. If 20 minutes of genetics just whet your appetite, perhaps you will want to watch the extended 3 hours lecture (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).

Reference: Greider, C.W. & Blackburn, E.H. (December 1985). Identification of a specific telomere terminal transferase activity in Tetrahymena extracts. Cell. Vol. 43, Issue 2, Part 1, pg. 405-413. DOI: 10.1016/0092-8674(85)90170-9. Article | FREE FULLTEXT PDF

By Neuronicus, 25 October 2015