The way the body ages could be more resilient than previously thought, a new study suggests.
King's College LondonFeb 4 2025
Experiment after experiment showed that chromatin was tolerating quite well the presence of this "wear-and-tear". But when we zoomed-in and investigated biochemical processes that directly targeted these aged areas that we introduced, we saw massive effects." Proteins, much like the rest of the body, change when aging. This is especially the case for the histone proteins that make up chromatin, which may "live" for ~100 days before being replenished and replaced.
To uncover the foundations of how proteins experience 'wear-and-tear' as they age, the team chemically built chromatin in a test tube at two distinct stages in its lifecycle – recently formed and very old, with the latter containing a PTM associated with aging. At approximately three million daltons, a unit of mass for atomic-scale objects like atoms, the team believe these chromatin models with controlled aging "scars" are the largest of their kind.
Dr. Luis Guerra explains: "This suggests that chromatin, which sets out the structure of DNA, is more robust than we thought... This could mean that the functional integrity of certain parts of the body can be maintained until those faulty parts can be repaired or switched out."
Cell Chromatin DNA Genome Protein
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