There is a growing interest in the role of transposable elements in aging. These are sections of the genome, remnants of ancient viral infections, that are capable of copying themselves when active, causing mutational damage in the process. Transposable elements are suppressed in youth, their portions of the genome folded away and hidden from transcriptional machinery, but this suppression fails with age as epigenetic markers that determine the structure of the genome change. Any mechanism that increases mutational damage in large numbers of cells might be suspected to contribute to degenerative…
Suppression of Transposable Element Activity Extends Life in Nematode Worms
There is a growing interest in the role of transposable elements in aging. These are sections of the genome, remnants of ancient viral infections, that are capable of copying themselves when active, causing mutational damage in the process. Transposable elements are suppressed in youth, their portions of the genome folded away and hidden from transcriptional machinery, but this suppression fails with age as epigenetic markers that determine the structure of the genome change. Any mechanism that increases mutational damage in large numbers of cells might be suspected to contribute to degenerative…