Friday 9 August 2013

Hormone Receptors May Regulate Effect of Nutrition On Life Expectancy Not Only in Roundworms, but Perhaps Also in Humans


Aug. 6, 2013 — A reduced caloric intake increases life expectancy in many species. But how diet prolongs the lives of model organisms such as fruit flies and roundworms has remained a mystery until recently. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Cologne discovered that a hormone receptor is one of the links between nutrition and life expectancy in the roundworms.

The receptor protein NHR-62 increases the lifespan of the animals by twenty per cent if their calorie intake is reduced. Furthermore, another study showed that the hormone receptor NHR-8 affects development into adulthood as well as the maximum lifespan of the worms. It may be possible that receptors related to these are also responsible for regulating life expectancy in human beings.

The roundworm Caenorhabditis eleganslives only about 20 days. This makes it an ideal research subject, as the complete lifecycle of the worm can be studied in a short time. Also, the worm consists of less than a thousand cells, and its genetic make-up has been extensively analysed, and contains many genes similar to humans. The scientists in Adam Antebi's team at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing use Caenorhabditis elegans to find out how hormones influence ageing. They are particularly interested in hormone receptors that reside in the cell nucleus, which regulate the activity of metabolic genes.


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