Longevity Promoting Protein has been Identified (This may also have implications for cancer research)

Longevity Promoting Protein has been Identified

(This may also have implications for cancer research)

Scientists have identified a molecule that may play an important part in promoting longevity during a series of recent investigations. This bio molecule is able to make Caenorhabditis elegans worms live up to 33 percent longer than normal, and the crew behind the discovery reveals that their investigation could also have additional implications for cancer research too. In this regard, these worms that were studied for this investigation are very similar to humans, and so scientists are hopeful that the results could also be translated to us too.

Jeffrey L. Benovic, who was a researcher on the new study, explains “The links we have found in worms suggest the same kind of interactions occur in mammals although human biology is certainly more complicated. We have much work to do to sort out these pathways, but that is our goal” He is the chief of the Thomas Jefferson University (TJU) Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, where he also works as a professor. The scientist reveals that C. elegans worms which were genetically modified to be born without expressing the protein arrestin tended to live remarkably longer than their counterparts which expressed the molecule.

He says that the equivalent of this protein, arrestin, in humans is called PTEN and this agent is responsible in suppressing the development of cancer tumors as well. The research team says that Most of the proteins that were identified thus far in C. elegans have human equivalents as well. “A little less arrestin is good – at least for worms,” Benovic says.

Facts of the new study were published in the latest online issue of the esteemed scientific Journal of Biological Chemistry. The study was partially funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).

“We don't know at this point if human arrestins regulate PTEN function or if anything happens to arrestin levels during the development of cancer. Do increasing levels turn off more PTEN, thus promoting cancer, or do levels decrease and allow PTEN to be more active? If it turns out to be the first scenario – that increasing amounts of arrestin turn off the tumor suppressor activity of PTEN, then it may be possible to selectively inhibit that process,” Benovic adds.

However the group emphasizes that, the exact correlations and control mechanisms between human arrestin and PTEN are not yet clear and more research is needed in this field.

Some facts about Caenorhabditis elegans

Caenorhabditis elegans is a free-living, transparent nematode about 1 mm in length, which lives in temperate soil environments. Research into the molecular and developmental biology of C. elegans was begun in 1974 by Sydney Brenner and it has since been used extensively as a model organism.