Researchers at Northwestern University in the United States are studying the Old Order Amish, a population that has lived for hundreds of years in a kind of geographic and genetic isolation, in Bern, Indiana. They discovered that the oldest men in this community (i.e. 43 people out of the 177 members of the group) carried a modified version of the Serpine 1 gene. And that the carriers of this modified gene lived on average 10 years more.
Longer telomeres
The Serpine 1 gene is responsible for the production of a protein that promotes cell death and shortening telomeres, those little protective caps located at the end of chromosomes that prevent DNA from being damaged. As we age, telomeres shorten, causing disease and degeneration. However, in the Amish carrying the modified gene, the telomeres remain longer.
“Our study sheds light on a new therapeutic target to fight against aging” underlines Professor Douglas Vaughan, who heads the Faculty of Medicine at Northwestern University
This study was published in the journal Science advances.
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