Aging Gracefully Requires Taking Out The Trash

Aging Gracefully Requires Taking Out The Trash

Suppressing a cellular cleanup-mechanism known as autophagy can accelerate the accumulation of protein aggregates that leads to neural degeneration. In an upcoming issue of Autophagy, scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies report for the first time that the opposite is true as well: Boosting autophagy in the nervous system of fruit flies prevented the age-dependent accumulation of cellular damage in neurons and promoted longevity.

"We discovered that levels of several key pathway members are reduced in Drosophila neural tissue as a normal part of aging," says senior author Kim Finley, Ph.D., a scientist in the Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory, "which suggests there is an age-dependent suppression of autophagy that may be a contributing factor for human neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer's disease."