Epigenetics of aging and aging-related disease.
Aging is associated with a wide range of human disorders, including cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular, and neurodegenerative diseases. Long thought to be an inexorable road toward decline and diseases, aging is in fact remarkably plastic. Such plasticity could be harnessed to approach age-related diseases from a novel perspective. Although many studies have focused on the genes that impact aging, the nongenetic regulation of aging is gaining increasing attention. Specifically, aging is associated with profound epigenetic changes, resulting in alterations of gene expression and disturbances in broad genome architecture and the epigenomic landscape. The potential reversibility of these epigenetic changes that occur as a hallmark of aging offers exciting opportunities to alter the trajectory of age-related diseases. This short review highlights key epigenetic players in the regulation of aging, as well as both future goals and challenges to the utilization of epigenetic strategies to delay and reverse the main diseases of aging.
Department of Genetics, Stanford University, California. Glenn Laboratories for the Biology of Aging, Stanford, California. anne.brunet@stanford.edu.
Anne
A
Brunet
Department of Cell and Developmental Biology and Penn Epigenetics Program, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia.
Shelley L
SL
Berger
D000375:Aging / Q000235:genetics*; D002908:Chronic Disease; D004247:DNA / Q000235:genetics*; D004249:DNA Damage; D057890:Epigenomics / Q000379:methods*; D018507:Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental; D006801:Humans
D004247:DNA
Epigenetic changes; Reversibility.