Genome instability: Cancer or aging?

Genome Instability and Aging

Peroxiredoxins, gerontogenes linking aging to genome instability and cancer.

Age is the highest risk factor known for a large number of maladies, including cancers. However, it is unclear how aging mechanistically predisposes the organism to such diseases and which gene products are the primary targets of the aging process. Recent studies suggest that peroxiredoxins, antioxidant enzymes preventing tumor development, are targets of age-related deterioration and that bols...

Increased Genome Instability in Aging Yeast

In the September 26 issue of Science, McMurray and Gottschling (2003) report that aged yeast cells display high rates of loss of heterozygosity. Furthermore, they show that this reflects an impaired ability to correctly detect and repair DNA double-strand breaks. These results provide insights into how aging can engender genomic instability in eukaryotic cells.

DNA replication stress, genome instability and aging

Genome instability is a fundamentally important component of aging in all eukaryotes. How age-related genome instability occurs remains unclear. The free radical theory of aging posits oxidative damage to DNA and other cellular constituents as a primary determinant of aging. More recent versions of this theory predict that mitochondria are a major source of reactive oxygen species (ROS) that ca...

Measuring genome instability in aging - a mini-review.

BACKGROUND There is mounting evidence for an age-dependent accumulation of somatic mutations as a result of the inherent imperfection of DNA replication and repair. A possible age-related decline in genome maintenance systems may exacerbate this age-related loss of genome integrity. A review of the current methods of mutation detection is timely in view of the lack of insight as to the magnitud...