Aging reversed

Researchers from the Harvard Medical School restored vision in old mice by reversing their biological clock. They focused on the so-called epigenetic changes within cells which accumulate as the organism ages. The scientists think that the “epigenetic noise” is disrupting the cell’s ability to regenerate. It is responsible for the degenerative process we know as natural aging – causing tissue dysfunction and finally death. The new approach is to reprogram cells, so they come back to the earlier, “younger” stage – possible because “mammalian tissues retain a record of youthful epigenetic information”.

Scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison identified gen of crucial importance in biological aging. Their research relies on cellular reprogramming which aims to reverse cell aging through mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) rejuvenation. The findings could prove critical towards developing new pharmacological therapies needed to treat osteoporosis, Parkinson’s disease, cartilage degeneration, and heart diseases.

The new microscope allows seeing “through skulls” to detect diseases. Developed by the research team at the Centre for Molecular Spectroscopy and Dynamics in Seoul, the tool can create a microscopic map of neural networks in a mouse’s brain through the animal’s skull. Called the “reflection matrix microscope”, it uses both its hardware and a computational adaptive optics algorithm to correct faults in the image. This way, the number of errors it can correct is ten times greater than that of standard systems.