(Press-News.org) Have you ever wondered why young children can eat bags of Halloween candy and feel fine the next day – compared to adults who experience all sorts of agony following the same junk food binge? Evolution and a gene called Foxo may be to blame. Working in fruit flies, scientists at the Buck Institute have identified a mechanism that helps the flies adapt to changes in diet when they're young; they've discovered that same mechanism gets misregulated as the flies age, disrupting metabolic homeostasis, or balance.
In a study appearing in Cell Reports, researchers focus on the function of the Foxo gene in the intestines of fruit flies. Foxo is widely expressed throughout the body (both in flies and in humans), particularly in muscle, the liver and pancreas – and can regulate many aspects of metabolism in response to insulin signaling. Lead author Jason Karpac, PhD, Assistant Research Professor at the Buck, says when young animals experience a change in diet, insulin signaling gets repressed, which turns on Foxo. "In normal young animals Foxo turns on and off quite easily, allowing for a seamless adjustment to changes in diet," said Karpac. "The process is evolutionarily conserved, it protects young animals and helps guarantee their survival," he said.
But Karpac says as the animals age, Foxo stops responding to insulin signaling (not a good thing for non-youngsters who crave that Halloween candy). "In the flies Foxo gets chronically turned on, which disrupts lipid metabolism. The process reflects the development of a general inflammatory condition in the aging gut."
"It has been proposed that our modern high-sugar/high fat diets can lead to misregulation of evolutionarily conserved dietary responses," said Buck Institute faculty Heinrich Jasper, PhD, lead scientist on the study. "That may be the case. Metabolism is a very complex process -- lots of things can go wrong which increases stress in the animals." Jasper says age-related loss of metabolic balance is a risk factor for many human pathologies. The goal is to identify age-related changes in metabolic pathways with the hope of being able to intervene. "Our aim is to develop treatments that would preserve well-functioning metabolism as part of healthy aging – something that would likely not ever include indulging in candy binges."
###
Other contributors to the study include Benoit Biteau, Department of Biology, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY. The work was supported by the National Institute on Aging (NIH RO1 AG028127) and American Federation of Age Research and the Ellison Medical Foundation.
Citation: "Misregulation of an Adaptive Metabolic Response Contributes to the Age-Related Disruption of Lipid Homeostatis in Drosophila" Cell Reports, epub, September 12, 2013.
About the Buck Institute for Research on Aging
The Buck Institute is the U.S.'s first independent research organization devoted to Geroscience – focused on the connection between normal aging and chronic disease. Based in Novato, CA, The Buck is dedicated to extending "Healthspan", the healthy years of human life and does so utilizing a unique interdisciplinary approach involving laboratories studying the mechanisms of aging and those focused on specific diseases. Buck scientists strive to discover new ways of detecting, preventing and treating age-related diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, cancer, cardiovascular disease, macular degeneration, osteoporosis, diabetes and stroke. In their collaborative research, they are supported by the most recent developments in genomics, proteomics, bioinformatics and stem cell technologies. For more information: http://www.thebuck.org
Halloween candy spooks aging digestive systems! Research in fruit flies helps explain why
2013-10-15
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
UT Southwestern reports promising new approach to drug-resistant infections
2013-10-15
DALLAS – Oct. 15, 2013 – A new type of antibiotic called a PPMO, which works by blocking genes essential for bacterial reproduction, successfully killed a multidrug-resistant germ common to health care settings, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers report.
The technology and new approach offer potential promise against the growing problem of antibiotic resistance, the researchers said.
The pathogen (germ) – called Acinetobacter – can cause infections from pneumonia to serious blood or wound infections, posing greater risk to people with weakened immune systems, ...
New 3-D method used to grow miniature pancreas
2013-10-15
An international team of researchers from the University of Copenhagen have successfully developed an innovative 3D method to grow miniature pancreas from progenitor cells. The future goal is to use this model to help in the fight against diabetes. The research results has just been published in the scientific journal Development.
Professor Anne Grapin-Botton and her team at the Danish Stem Cell Centre have developed a three-dimensional culture method which enables the efficient expansion of pancreatic cells. The new method allows the cell material from mice to grow ...
The musical ages of modern man: How our taste in music changes over a lifetime
2013-10-15
The explosion in music consumption over the last century has made 'what you listen to' an important personality construct – as well as the root of many social and cultural tribes – and, for many people, their self-perception is closely associated with musical preference. We would perhaps be reluctant to admit that our taste in music alters - softens even - as we get older.
Now, a new study suggests that - while our engagement with it may decline - music stays important to us as we get older, but the music we like adapts to the particular 'life challenges' we face at different ...
Method of recording brain activity could lead to mind-reading devices, Stanford scientists say
2013-10-15
STANFORD, Calif. — A brain region activated when people are asked to perform mathematical calculations in an experimental setting is similarly activated when they use numbers — or even imprecise quantitative terms, such as "more than"— in everyday conversation, according to a study by Stanford University School of Medicine scientists.
Using a novel method, the researchers collected the first solid evidence that the pattern of brain activity seen in someone performing a mathematical exercise under experimentally controlled conditions is very similar to that observed when ...
Rice scientists create a super antioxidant
2013-10-15
Scientists at Rice University are enhancing the natural antioxidant properties of an element found in a car's catalytic converter to make it useful for medical applications.
Rice chemist Vicki Colvin led a team that created small, uniform spheres of cerium oxide and gave them a thin coating of fatty oleic acid to make them biocompatible. The researchers say their discovery has the potential to help treat traumatic brain injury, cardiac arrest and Alzheimer's patients and can guard against radiation-induced side effects suffered by cancer patients.
Their nanoparticles ...
Drug activates virus against cancer
2013-10-15
Parvoviruses cause no harm in humans, but they can attack and kill cancer cells. Since 1992, scientists at the German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) have been studying these viruses with the aim of developing a viral therapy to treat glioblastomas, a type of aggressively growing brain cancer. A clinical trial has been conducted since 2011 at the Heidelberg University Neurosurgery Hospital to test the safety of treating cancer patients with the parvovirus H-1.
"We obtained impressive results in preclinical trials with parvovirus H-1 in ...
How Earth's rotation affects vortices in nature
2013-10-15
VIDEO:
This is a view from above of the growing and spiraling wave field emitted by a geophysical vortex due to the radiative instability. The black circle represents a boundary of...
Click here for more information.
WASHINGTON, D.C. Oct. 15, 2013 -- What do smoke rings, tornadoes and the Great Red Spot of Jupiter have in common? They are all examples of vortices, regions within a fluid (liquid, gas or plasma) where the flow spins around an imaginary straight or curved axis. ...
An optical switch based on a single nano-diamond
2013-10-15
A recent study led by researchers of the ICFO (Institute of Photonic Sciences) demonstrates that a single nano-diamond can be operated as an ultrafast single-emitter optical switch operating at room temperature. The scientific results of this study have been published in Nature Physics.
Electronic transistors have become a key component to modern electronics, drastically improving the speed of information processing of current technologies. An electronic transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify and switch electronic signals. The much sought after optical ...
Women leave their handprints on the cave wall
2013-10-15
VIDEO:
Dean Snow, emeritus professor of anthropology, Penn State, discusses handprints on cave walls and the methods he used to determine if they were male or femaile.
Click here for more information.
Plaster handprints from kindergarten, handprint turkeys, handprints outside Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood -- are all part of modern life, but ancient people also left their handprints on rocks and cave walls. Now, a Penn State anthropologist can determine the sex of ...
Adding citrus fiber to meatballs improves nutritional quality, does not affect taste
2013-10-15
COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Many American diets fall short of meeting nutritional guidelines resulting in burgeoning obesity rates and health problems across the nation. Statistics show that most Americans consume only half of the daily recommended amount of dietary fiber. Now, a research team at the University of Missouri is addressing the fiber deficit by including citrus fiber in ground beef while retaining the quality and taste of the meat.
Ayca Gedikoglu, a doctoral student studying food science in the MU College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, and Andrew Clarke, ...