Research Perspective|Volume 3, Issue 2|pp 158—161

SIRT-ain relief from age-inducing stress

Dan Zhang¹, Yufei Liu², Danica Chen¹

¹Department of Nutritional Science & Toxicology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
²Department of Molecular & Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA

* * Equal contribution

Received: January 24, 2011Accepted: February 8, 2011Published: February 8, 2011

Copyright: © 2011 Zhang et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Aging is one of the most fundamental biological processes. It results in a decline in physiological function and an increased risk for pernicious diseases such as cancer. Oxidative stress has been proposed as a major cause of aging, but experimental tests of this hypothesis have been discouraging. Calorie restriction (CR) prevents age-related decline, but there are still gaps in our knowledge of the exact mechanisms underlying this feat. Finally, a tenuous balance exists between aging and cancer, calling for a search for interventions that prevent both aging and cancer. Recent work on the mammalian sirtuin SIRT3 has shed light on these long-standing issues and suggested new approaches to ameliorate the ravages of aging.