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Research Perspective|Volume 3, Issue 3|pp 325—328

Does hypothalamic SIRT1 regulate aging?

Giorgio Ramadori1, Roberto Coppari1,2
  • 1Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Hypothalamic Research, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, 75390, USA
  • 2Faculty of Medicine, Universita’ Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona 60020, Italy
Received: March 14, 2011Accepted: March 18, 2011Published: March 18, 2011
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.100311

Copyright: © 2011 Ramadori 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

In virtually all organisms, life expectancy is profoundly affected by caloric intake. For example, dietary restriction (DR; a feeding regimen of fewer calories compared to the ad libitum level without causing malnutrition) has been shown to lengthen, whereas hypercaloric (HC) diet feeding to shorten, lifespan. Recent findings in invertebrates indicate that specialized groups of cells (e.g.: metabolic-sensing neurons) detect changes in caloric intake and convey energy-status-variation signals to other cells in the body to regulate lifespan. In mammals, whether metabolic-sensing neurons govern aging in a cell-non-autonomous fashion is unknown. Yet, this is a captivating and testable hypothesis.