Article] Protein of life, protein of death

"Robert Karl Stonjek" <[email hidden]> wrote in
message "]news:[email hidden]...

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Protein of life, protein of death The same enzyme regulates programmed cell death and

embryonic development

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By Andrea Rinaldi

Complex, multicellular organisms must finely regulate

their inner

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environment to assure cells can thrive, but must also

initiate apoptosis

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(programmed cell death) when necessary. Apoptosis is

critical for normal

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development and tissue homeostasis, and aberrant apoptosis

can lead to

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cancer and neural degeneration. In a PNAS article

published online December

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8, Jianhua Zhang and colleagues at the University of

Cincinnati College of

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Medicine pinpoint an enzyme that plays an important role

in both the

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regulation of normal apoptosis and embryogenesis in

mammals (PNAS,

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DOI:10.1073/pnas.2636393100, December 8, 2003).

Zhang et al. investigated the in vivo function of

endonuclease G (EndoG), a

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mitochondrial protein encoded in the nucleus, previously

reported to be

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important for nuclear DNA fragmentation during apoptosis

and mitochondrial

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DNA replication. The authors studied the consequences of

EndoG deficiency in

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mice and observed that homozygous mutant embryos died

early during

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development and had lost normal morphology, while

heterozygous animals

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developed normally. Mitochondrial numbers were the same in

mutant and

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wildtype mice, suggesting that EndoG is not involved in

mitochondrial DNA

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replication. The authors also observed that EndoG mutant

cells subjected to

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apoptotic stimuli were more resistant to cell death than

wildtype control

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cells.

Read the rest at The Scientis.com biomedcentral.com02Open ↗

Very interesting stuff! Even so, as much as I would like to believe there is a magic bullet (or just
several) for life-extension--I'm starting to think that life is pre-limited by the natural physical
limits to growth (size and height limited by gravity and many other natural factors for ex.)

As long as we grow, albeit slowly in older ages, we remain alive, when growth slows to a stop, the
entire system loses its "life-momentum" so to speak, and the system grinds to a stop (for many
trivial reasons that accumulate in dynamic systems). Of course, I still hope I'm wrong. ...tonyC

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Posted by Robert Karl Stonjek.