DNA discovered biological clock

American scientists have discovered the biological clock based on DNA, which measures the speed of the aging of tissues and organs in our body.

This hour shows that the majority of old tissue with the same speed as the whole body, but there are parts of the body aging more quickly or more slowly. Diseased organs, for example, can be up to ten years "old" rather than sound and organs in the same body.

The team of researchers from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) believes that deciphering the mechanism of work of this ore would enable scientists to better understand the aging process, and thus also come with medicines and therapy new which could slow down aging.

"It would be very interesting if we developed new therapies that will" reset "the clock and keep us younger longer," said team leader Steve Horvath, a professor of genetics and biostatistikës.

In a study published in the journal "Genome Biology", US researchers stressed that they had examined the DNA of 8,000 samples from 51 healthy cells and tissues and cancer. In particular, they analyzed how methylation, a natural process that chemically modifies DNA varies with age.

Horvath and his colleagues concluded that methylation of 353 DNA markers changes continuously during aging, and it can serve as a biological clock.

Flap time soon until the age of 20 years, and then slows down. So far it is not known whether changes in DNA that cause aging or are in fact a consequence of aging.

"The appearance of gray hair is a sign of aging, but no one would say that what causes aging," said Horvath.

Research so far has led to interesting results. Tests on healthy heart tissue showed that there are about nine years "younger", as breast tissue was older than the rest of the body, in an average of two years.

Diseased tissue aging at a different pace. Cancer, for example, the clock speeds by an average of 36 years.

Horvath study also showed that the biological clock can return to zero when the cells of an adult stem cells reprogrammed through.

The conversion process cells, adult stem cells similar, which found John Gurdon of Cambridge University and Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University, was awarded the Nobel Prize last year.

"This concept is evidence that the return back the biological clock is possible," says Horvat, the next step of which is the study of how neurodegenerative and infectious diseases affect the biological clock and vice versa