- Aging is a natural part of life that changes the body in ways we sometimes might not like.
- Researchers from Harvard Medical School believe that epigenetic changes — and not just changes to the DNA — affect aging.
- This view is supported by experiments where epigenetic changes caused mice to first age and the reversal of the induced changes caused reverse aging.
Aging is a life process everyone goes through. As we age, the body changes in different ways — sometimes good and sometimes not as good as we might like.
Scientists have looked for ways to
For many years, most researchers have believed changes to a body’s DNA — called
Now a team led by researchers from Harvard Medical School finds support for an alternative hypothesis: it is the changes that affect the expression of the DNA — called
The study appears in the journal
Gene activity, the “switch on” and “switch off” of genes, is associated with epigenetic changes, chemical changes in the DNA that do not alter the DNA sequence. Epigenetics studies how the environment can modify how genes work without actually changing the genes themselves.
Some examples of things that may lead to epigenetic changes:
This study is not the first time researchers have used epigenetics to study aging. For example, previous research shows epigenetics provides a biological clock for the body, helping scientists measure a person’s aging rate.
Medical News Today spoke with Dr. David Sinclair, a professor in the Department of Genetics and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research at Harvard Medical School, and senior author of this…
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