This study shows that in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, the downregulation of active TE families extends lifespan. These findings link DNA activity to aging and opens up new possibilities in medical and biological research for health improvement and age determination. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-40957- (open access)
That title left me wondering if I even understand English.
The idea that long living organisms can unlock methods to extend human life has been science fiction for a long time. It’s exciting to see actual research in that direction. The actual science is always more mundane than science fiction.
the researchers used techniques to “downregulate” or quiet down the activity of TEs. When they did this to specific TEs in worms, the worms showed signs of aging slower. Even more, when multiple TEs were controlled simultaneously, the lifespan-extending effects added up.
“This epigenetic modification may pave the way for a method to determine age from DNA, providing an accurate biological clock.”
I think the writers who wrote the article (not journal article) mixed it up with some other article because it didn’t make sense to me. Which is why I used the title of the research paper as the title of the post.
Somewhere in-between is probably the sweet spot for communication to a lay-audience
My brain after reading the title:
Obfuscation of informational phraseology perplexes Hominds.
Average molecular biology moment
