Greetings!
Here's a question for everyone:
Would you like to slow down aging?
As we all know, aging is an unavoidable process in our life. Thus, it is almost impossible to be fully "negated", Or should we say, The methods to fully negate aging has not yet been found. However, slowing down aging is totally possible at our current era.
As our research suggests, we become more vulnerable to diseases as we get older. You might be thinking, I might still be okay if I have a heart disease, considering heart disease doesn't deal fatal damage to our body as long as proper medications are strictly followed, and of course, as long as our emotions don't go too strong, our heart would be able to handle them, no problem. However, picture this:
You are a fifty-years-old man/women. Your body status is still stable, and is believed to be able to survive for another 30 years without any problems. Your only treat to your life, is your coronal disease, which requires you to take a strong pill, but as mentioned earlier, your body could easily maintain its unwavering strength and health for another 30 years. However, a year later, you have been diagnosed with diabetes, which is a little quick, for your age. Starting from now, you not only have to take 1 pill, however go for hemodialysis quite often. Then, another year passed as more bad news arrived. You have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and imagine you could afford another pill for Alzheimer's. Following so, you have been diagnosed with hypertension, and is required to take 3 pills a day and often go for hemodialysis.
WOULD OUR BODY BE ABLE TO HANDLE THESE MEDICINES?
Let me ask you again, would you like to slow down aging?
We concluded that, all these diseases, cause by aging, quote down to 1 simple factor: Organ dysfunction. Which means that the organs are unable to function as good as before. Again, we could track down the main cause of organ dysfunction, which will be explained later on a diagram coming soon. Finally, our final "culprit" goes to the degradation of messenger RNA (mRNA).
What is a mRNA?
First, we look at the DNA. DNA is a strand which carries hereditary data in our body. Then, an enzyme (RNA polymerase) transcripts the DNA and forms RNA. the RNA is called "mRNA" after several processes (capping, cleaving, and polyadenylation), which it is then sent to the ribosomes(produces proteins in our cell) to produce protein.
Therefore, THE DEGRADATION OF mRNA ULTIMATELY AFFECTS OUR BODY.
So what got it wrong? Did the RNA polymerase made a mistake while transcripting? Well, the RNA polymerase doesn't usually make mistakes. Instead, it is when the mRNA was being sent to the Ribosome, some terrible things happened to it.
Free radicals, a noun too complicated to explain here (which might be explained later), would "attack" the mRNA on its journey, damaging it. In the process of "polyadenylation", a "tail" is added to protect it from external damage. However, these tails aren't strong enough to fully protect it, it will still take lesser damage, and literally affect our protein production.
The damage taken by the mRNA is slight, and the slight effects are almost unnoticeable. However, if this continues for a period of time, it would end up in the death of an organism.
Yes, we know, it is quite hard to understand, even our members took days to fully understand these "micro-parts" of our body. So here's a simple one: imagine your fort is under attack by enemies. Your name is RNA polymerase. Your general, called DNA, has a brilliant plan with guaranteed victory, which he asks you to copy it down and deliever it to the military supply, A.K.A RIBOSOME for reinforcements at any cost. Any other unexpected conditions would result at you and your fort's death.
However, the enemies aren't stupid either.
They are no match for the "plan", and therefore, they hired assailants named free radicals to attack you, preventing the "plan" to be delivered to the RIBOSOME.
Note that, when you're carrying the parcel with the "plan" in our car, you're no longer RNA polymerase. Instead, your new name is mRNA.
Sure, your car was protected by a barrier called POLY-A-TAIL, but the protection might not be enough, let's say it is sufficient for your first delivery. However, as the plan has to be repeatedly checked, the general asks you to deliver different plans over 7 days. And as the resources in the factory wasn't enough, the barrier becomes weaker and weaker over the time, and finally, the barrier broke and you're screwed. One page out of 200 pages of the plan was missing, and the plan was changed slightly. The changes were small, somehow unnoticeable, but if it was slightly wrong for 3 days straight, that would mean a failure of the plan.
Understand now?
Is there a way to solve it? YES! Our research shows that, We could have it solved either by "lengthening" the poly-A tail or Prevent it from getting shorter:
Preventing it from getting shorter:
Free radicals are blind. They don't target the mRNA specially. Instead, it targets random matters in our cells. Therefore, if we could increase the number of targets, this would prevent concentrated damage on the mRNA by free radicals.
Moreover, free radicals use a "suicidal action", in which when they "attack", they "sacrifice" themselves to turn other atoms into free radical. However, they have a weakness, we call it ANTIOXIDANT. They can easily "absorb" damage from the free radicals and if we extract more of these into our body, we WIN.
Lengthening:
We could make use of an enzyme "Polynucleotide adenylyltransferase" which works to "check" the length of our poly-A tail, which means lengthening the poly-A tail at the process of transcription(somehow like creating the barrier).
Ligase is another enzyme that catalyze(means to speed up, chemically) the joining of two large molecules. It can be used to "lengthen our poly-A tail".
That's all for our solutions! We hope that your curiosity is satisfied.
Feel free to comment if you're extremely interested in any of our topics,
THANK YOU!
