Journal Journal: Chronomeres
Many Slashdot readers are familiar with the research in Telomeres. The man who first proposed that telomeres were closely involved in the aging process (1971) was Aleksei Matveevich Olovnikov and research later confirmed his suspicions. But he was always clear that T's were not the cause itself. Now he thinks he may found that cause: Chronomeres. AMO suspects Chronomeres exist in the cerebrum and are the central regulators for the aging process
The most interesting part of it is that it presents a single target in the brain to focus on as opposed to Telomeres which are in all cells.
Telomeres links:
Scientific American, an excellent UK website
Chronomere links:
This hasn't been picked up yet by the mainstream rags yet so you have to sift through the online version of the Russian
Original Russian publication(English version).
Excellent background articles from the Russian journal that AMO co-edited.
A critical review
Contradictory views evidence.
Synopsis from the last paragraph in the original publication:
Thus, aging of an organism, as well as deployment in time of its developmental events, are running on the basis of a universal mechanism of the chronomere shortening. Truncation of the ends of DNA in redusomes of the brain is a result of the scheduled acts of molecular vandalism committed by transcriptional machinery and its accomplice--a special variant of biological rhythms.
