Aging is the physiological process in which the physiological functions of the organism gradually degenerate and eventually lead to death, and it is also one of the most serious risk factors for some chronic diseases. The researchers from Institute of Neuroscience and State Key Laboratory of Neuroscience in Shanghai, taking advantage of the short life cycle of C. elegans and using changes in neurotransmitter function as indicators, they found that reducing the expression of baz-2 and set-6 can increase the level of neurotransmitters in senile worms and delay aging. The homologous genes of baz-2 and set-6 are BAZ2B and EHMT1 in human.
In the human brain, the expression of BAZ2B and EHMT1 gradually increases with aging, and is positively correlated with the progression of Alzheimer's disease. The results show that BAZ2B and EHMT1 are important factors regulating the aging process, and they are new anti-aging target genes. BAZ-2/BAZ2B and SET-6/EHMT1 bind to the promoter region of genes related to mitochondrial function to alter the epigenetic modification of histones, and then regulate the expression of these genes and change the aging process.
Burton, N., Riccio, C., Dallaire, A., Price, J., Jenkins, B., Koulman, A. and Miska, E. (2019). C. elegans heritably adapts to P. vranovensis infection via a mechanism that requires the cysteine synthases cysl-1 and cysl-2.
