Analysis of telomeres, markers of ageing, shows that the process of deterioration occurs unevenly in different parts of the body.

The ageing of organisms is due to the loss of function of some of the body's organs and involves cardiovascular diseases or the development of cancers.

EBD-CSIC has collaborated with a research team that has discovered that the process followed by telomeres - markers of ageing that tend to shorten with age and stress - occurs unevenly in different parts of the body. The results suggest that not all organisms age at the same rate.

To reach this discovery, a seven-month experiment was conducted with individuals of a frog species (Xenopus laevis) that undergoes metamorphosis and measured telomeres length in five different tissues (tail muscle, heart, liver, intestine and leg muscle) during their larval phase, metamorphosis and after metamorphosis, until they reached the adult phase.

"This finding is very relevant because it suggests that the transformations that tissues undergo throughout life involve different ageing dynamics. For example, in the case of the gut, we observed longer telomeres after metamorphosis than before metamorphosis. In the amphibian species studied, the gut undergoes incredible transformations during metamorphosis (it changes from vegetarian to carnivore) and the observed changes in telomere length seem to be mediated by the existence of a large number of stem cells in the gut after metamorphosis," says Pablo Burraco, EBD-CSIC researcher and lead author of the study.

"Other tissues, such as the heart, undergo few changes once formed in early stages, which could explain the absence of changes in the length of their telomeres throughout life, in addition to possible mechanisms protecting their ageing," adds the scientist.

The ageing of organisms is due to the loss of functionality of some of the body's organs. This process involves everything from cardiovascular diseases to nutritional imbalances or the development of cancers. Therefore, says the researcher, "understanding the dynamics of markers linked to ageing is valuable information for future studies in this direction".

Futuro de la investigación

"The next steps would include manipulating telomere length in different tissues and seeing if this implies changes in the function of different body parts. We also need to study the mechanisms that explain the observed changes in telomere length, with special interest in the possible role of stem cells," explains Burraco.

The research has involved the University of Glasgow (School of Biodiversity, One Health and Veterinary Medicine), where Pablo Burraco carried out his work as a beneficiary of a Marie Curie Fellowship contract (METAGE project) from the European Commission.

Reference:

Pablo Burraco, Miguel Hernandez-Gonzalez, Neil B. Metcalfe y Pat Monaghan. Ageing across the great divide: tissue transformation, organismal growth and temperature shape telomere dynamics through the metamorphic transition. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2022.2448

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