Mismatch repair system and aging: microsatellite instability in peripheral blood cells from differently aged participants.
Age-related alterations of DNA repair could be involved in the accumulation of genetic damage with age. Few data suggest a possible alteration with age of the mismatch repair system, evidenced by the acquisition of microsatellite instability. We aimed to point out a possible implication of this repair system in the accumulation of genetic damage with age. Peripheral blood cell DNA from 226 participants, 110 young (25-35 years), 58 old (85-97 years), and 58 centenarian was analyzed at five polymorphic microsatellite loci (CD4, p53, VWA31, TPOX, and FES/FPS) to point out age-related instabilities or modifications in allele frequencies. FES/FPS microsatellite was the most instable, showing both the appearance of trizygosis in DNA from old participants and differences in allele patterns among age groups, thus indicating an association between increased microsatellite instability and aging, one of the possible causes of which being an impairment of mismatch repair system capacity with age.
Neri
Simona
S
Laboratorio di Immunologia e Genetica, Istituto di Ricerca Codivilla Putti, IOR, Bologna, Italy.
Gardini
Alessandro
A
Facchini
Andrea
A
Olivieri
Fabiola
F
Franceschi
Claudio
C
Ravaglia
Giovanni
G
Mariani
Erminia
E
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000235:genetics* / Q000502:physiology; D000483:Alleles; D020137:Base Pair Mismatch / Q000235:genetics* / Q000502:physiology; D001483:Base Sequence; D001773:Blood Cells; D015331:Cohort Studies; D004260:DNA Repair; D004276:DNA, Satellite; D005260:Female; D042822:Genomic Instability / Q000235:genetics*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D018895:Microsatellite Repeats; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009010:Monte Carlo Method; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction / Q000379:methods; D011336:Probability; D012494:Sampling Studies; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity
D004276:DNA, Satellite