Longevity Daily: 8th August, 2020

Everyday our team of researchers in Oxford are inundated with scientific, and medical research articles that have the potential to improve health, wellbeing, and longevity. In this blog we highlight a few of them that caught our attention today.

1. We all intuitively understand that our brain doesn’t work as well as we get old. Brain degeneration during aging can become pathological and manifest itself as dementia, Alzheimer’s, or Parkinson’s disease. Therefore it is vital that we find out how to regenerate our brain.
   • In a recent research paper scientists from China, and Australia show that overexpressing an enzyme Cytochrome c oxidase subunit Va (COX5A), which is involved in maintaining normal mitochondrial function, can improve spatial recognition memory, enable growth of new hippocampal cells, and improve hippocampal plasticity.
   • Overexpressing COX5A also increases the activation of other beneficial proteins involved in new brain cell development such as Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF).
     
     
2. All longevity researchers are looking for the secrets to increase healthspan, and lifespan. One way to find these secrets is to compare old organisms with their young counterparts and assess which molecules are differentially expressed in them.
   • In a recent paper scientists from Spain, Germany, and the US, have done just that and found that the protein Cdc42 (Cell division control protein 42 homolog) significantly increases during aging in mice. Cdc42 is generally involved in cell cycle regulation.
   • The researchers found that Cdc42 was significantly active in old female mice, and when they were give a compound that inhibited Cdc42 activity it significantly extended their average, and maximum lifespan.
   • In addition, the old mice treat with Cdc42 inhibiting compound also showed low levels of harmful inflammation inducing proteins, and their blood cells had youthful epigenetic profile.