Researchers from the Institute of Neurosciences of Alicante, led by Ángel Barco, are unraveling the reason why environmental conditions can influence cognitive deterioration during aging. They are looking for the enigma in the expression of certain genes in the hippocampus, a region of the brain that regulates memory and learning capacity, among other functions.
“We investigate how the expression of genes in hippocampal neurons is altered depending on the age of an animal and its living conditions. These changes would be due to what we know as epigenetics. It is not about mutations in the genome, but about changes that cause some genes to be activated more than others so that the cell to which they belong does one or another activity, depending on environmental conditions such as exercising or having a rich social life. .” explains Barco.
The researcher's team makes epigenomic analyzes of hippocampal neurons from mice that live in spacious cages and in a community; in mice living in normal-sized cages, with few companions, and in socially isolated mice living in small spaces. Its objective is to detect in which parts of the genome epigenetic erosion occurs; wear and tear that causes cells that should be expressing a type of gene to make mistakes, with associated cognitive impairment.
“In science, this erosion stems from Waddington's concept of the epigenetic landscape, who explained in 1940 that cells could be classified in a landscape according to their degree of maturity. The stem cells would be up on the mountain. As they specialize by expressing some genes and not others, these cells would fall into a valley, that of neurons, for example, or that of lymphocytes. They all have the same genes, what distinguishes them is that they express themselves selectively”, illustrates Barco. “With age, the landscape wears away. Our objective is to decipher how the environment in which we live can speed up or slow down this wear and tear, to find out what makes us age better or worse”, he concludes.
The Ask Big Vang section is financed by the La Caixa Foundation.
