The Secret to Aging May Lie in How Our DNA Is Packaged

Park, Alice. "The Secret to Aging May Lie in How Our DNA Is Packaged." Time. Time, n.d. Web.8 June 2015.

In the article “The Secret to Aging May Lie in How Our DNA Is Packaged”, Alice Park describes the discoveries made by scientists at the Salk Institute. A team led by Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte studied patients with Werner syndrome, a disease that rapidly accelerates aging. People with this disease carry cells that have loosely packed chromosomes that are located in the nucleus. This is a result of a mutation of the Werner gene that fails to organize the chromosomes and does not repair mistakes in the DNA replicating process. When scientists removed the Werner gene from a healthy embryonic stem cell, they aged prematurely. Their chromosomes loosened, as they would with a patient with Werner syndrome. Scientists hypothesize that how quickly someone ages depends on how tightly packed the DNA is.

Although this has only been done in a population of stem cells, in the future, this knowledge may develop medical technology to alter the packaging of DNA and slow or even reverse the aging process. However, further research must be done to justify that chromosome instability is the only factor to aging before scientists begin to alter genes in people.

This article was clear as to describing the how the chromosome behaves in a healthy person compared to a patient with Werner syndrome. However, the author did not clearly explain the role of the Werner gene. The author failed to write any statistics, for example, it would have been interesting to know how much quicker cells age without the Werner gene compared to healthy cells. Also, the quotes selected were redundant and did not add anything. Overall, this discovery is very promising and with further development may result in finding ways to lengthen one’s life.