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Will a new generation of water-splitting devices help green hydrogen replace fossil fuels?
Green hydrogen production will must increase 300-fold to help forestall dangerous climate change
News at a glance: Space X competitor, cancer institute leader, and the U.S. exit from Paris
The latest in science and policy
Personalized miniorgans could speed treatments for rare diseases
Method shrinks time for testing tailored RNA drugs from months to weeks
Ergothioneine improves healthspan of aged animals by enhancing cGPDH activity through CSE-dependent persulfidation
Ergothioneine (ET), a dietary thione/thiol, is receiving growing attention for its possible benefits in healthy aging and metabolic resilience. Our study investigates ET's effects on healthspan in aged animals, revealing lifespan extension and enhanced mobility in Caenorhabditis elegans, accompanied by improved stress resistance and reduced age-associated biomarkers. In aged rats, ET administration enhances exercise endurance, muscle mass, and vascularization, concomitant with higher NAD^(+)...
The new science of menopause: these emerging therapies could change women's health
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X chromosome passed from mother to daughter influences brain ageing
No abstract
Depressive intensity, duration, and their associations with cognitive decline: a population-based study in Korea
Existing epidemiological studies have ignored the effect of depressive duration on cognitive decline despite the presence of biological cues and understudied the depression-cognition association in Asian countries in the context of increasing cognitive burden worldwide. We aimed to comprehensively characterize the effects of depressive duration and intensity on cognitive decline at the population level. A total of 6406 individuals from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA) from 2010 to...
Immune evasion through mitochondrial transfer in the tumour microenvironment
Cancer cells in the tumour microenvironment use various mechanisms to evade the immune system, particularly T cell attack¹. For example, metabolic reprogramming in the tumour microenvironment and mitochondrial dysfunction in tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) impair antitumour immune responses^(2-4). However, detailed mechanisms of such processes remain unclear. Here we analyse clinical specimens and identify mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) mutations in TILs that are shared with cancer cells....
Multiscale footprints reveal the organization of cis-regulatory elements
Cis-regulatory elements (CREs) control gene expression and are dynamic in their structure and function, reflecting changes in the composition of diverse effector proteins over time¹. However, methods for measuring the organization of effector proteins at CREs across the genome are limited, hampering efforts to connect CRE structure to their function in cell fate and disease. Here we developed PRINT, a computational method that identifies footprints of DNA-protein interactions from bulk and...
The maternal X chromosome affects cognition and brain ageing in female mice
Female mammalian cells have two X chromosomes, one of maternal origin and one of paternal origin. During development, one X chromosome randomly becomes inactivated^(1-4). This renders either the maternal X (X(m)) chromosome or the paternal X (X(p)) chromosome inactive, causing X mosaicism that varies between female individuals, with some showing considerable or complete skew of the X chromosome that remains active^(5-7). Parent-of-X origin can modify epigenetics through DNA methylation^(8,9) and...
Amyloid-associated hyperconnectivity drives tau spread across connected brain regions in Alzheimer's disease
In Alzheimer's disease (AD), amyloid-β (Aβ) triggers the aggregation and spreading of tau pathology, which drives neurodegeneration and cognitive decline. However, the pathophysiological link between Aβ and tau remains unclear, which hinders therapeutic efforts to attenuate Aβ-related tau accumulation. Aβ has been found to trigger neuronal hyperactivity and hyperconnectivity, and preclinical research has shown that tau spreads across connected neurons in an activity-dependent manner. Here, we...
Functional classification of tauopathy strains reveals the role of protofilament core residues
Distinct tau amyloid assemblies underlie diverse tauopathies but defy rapid classification. Cell and animal experiments indicate tau functions as a prion, as different strains propagated in cells cause unique, transmissible neuropathology after inoculation. Strain amplification requires compatibility of the monomer and amyloid template. We used cryo-electron microscopy to study one cell-based yellow fluorescent protein (YFP)-tagged strain, resolving its amyloid nature. We then used sequential...
Hypoxia as a medicine
Oxygen is essential for human life, yet a growing body of preclinical research is demonstrating that chronic continuous hypoxia can be beneficial in models of mitochondrial disease, autoimmunity, ischemia, and aging. This research is revealing exciting new and unexpected facets of oxygen biology, but translating these findings to patients poses major challenges, because hypoxia can be dangerous. Overcoming these barriers will require integrating insights from basic science, high-altitude...
The Role of Innate Immunity in Healthy Aging Through Antimicrobial Peptides
In a super-aging society, the increase in the elderly population is closely tied to a rise in infectious diseases due to factors such as weakened immune systems and decreased vaccine efficacy in older adults. Various opportunistic pathogens commonly encountered in everyday life can cause infections and diseases when an individual's immune defence is weakened due to aging. These factors underscore the importance of preventive measures against pathogenic infections and the aging of immune systems...
Spontaneous blinking and brain health in aging: Large-scale evaluation of blink-related oscillations across the lifespan
Blink-related oscillations (BROs) are newly discovered neurophysiological brainwave responses associated with spontaneous blinking, and represent environmental monitoring and awareness processes as the brain evaluates new visual information appearing after eye re-opening. BRO responses have been demonstrated in healthy young adults across multiple task states and are modulated by both task and environmental factors, but little is known about this phenomenon in aging. To address this, we...