【Animal Modeling】-The secret weapon for mitochondrial disease mice to delay aging

  POLG knockout mice, mouse models of mitochondrial disease and premature aging may be mistaken for older than actual age. At 9 months of age, she developed hair loss, osteoporosis, hearing loss, infertility, heart damage, and weight loss. Although these mice were born with the disease, teenagers have "secret weapons" that can delay the signs of aging for a period of time.

  According to a new study by the Sack Institute of Biology in the United States, lifespan hormones can help these mice (thousands of mutations in the mitochondria at birth) maintain a balanced metabolism when they are young. as the picture shows. This work provides new insights into potential new therapies for human mitochondrial and metabolic diseases. The relevant research results were published on "PNAS" on June 29. Ronald Evans, director of the Gene Expression Institute of the Soak Institute and the lead author of this article, said: "These findings make it possible for us to understand the links between diet, health and aging, and to analyze these links from a molecular perspective. When Evans and his When his collaborators studied these mice, they found that the life-promoting endocrine hormone fgf21 was very active, even though these mice showed signs of accelerated aging. Christopher Wall, a graduate student at the Evans Institute ) Explained: In order to explain this contradiction, the research team actually used FGF21 to compress the mitochondria and rearrange the metabolic state of these mice. In this article, Evans and his collaborators explain how FGF21 transforms tissues with important metabolic functions From sugar burning to fat burning. Michael Downs, a senior researcher at the Soak Institute, said: "Mitochondrial dysfunction is easier to deal with. These mice worked well for a period of time, but in the end their researchers also found that mice fed a high-fat diet with FGF21 can enhance the effect of FGF21 and completely resist diet-induced obesity and many other related diseases, thereby making The fat in the body is exhausted. I found it tolerable.

  Evans: "I believe that turning on FGF21 can help animals maintain their metabolic health. The hormone in mice is very young. If not, they may age faster."

  This new result can affect human health in many ways," Evans said. The increase in dietary fat intake can reduce mitochondrial stress by helping hormones and alleviating symptoms in patients, as FGF21 levels have been previously observed in patients with mitochondrial diseases At the same time, the results of these studies indicate that mild stimulation of mitochondria with drugs can activate beneficial FGF21-dependent metabolic changes in patients with obesity and other metabolic diseases.

  Downs said: "Now, we are studying the interaction between FGF21 and dietary fat in human patients with mitochondrial diseases, and how we can control this dynamic change in different ways."