Rest of Volume 1, Issue 3

The rest of the third issue consists of a favorable review of a popular science book about aging by Ben Bova, a summary of a telomeres and telomerase conference, an overview of the Gordon conference on aging, a review of a paper on the reasons for longer female longevity compared to male longevity, and the usual literature and web watch.

The review of the paper on longer female longevity doesn't mention anything new (hypotheses: estrogen as protective substance, less risky behaviour, two X chromosomes acting as backup, blood loss through menstruation lowering iron load)

The Gordon conference is an interesting idea. People show unpublished material, with the condition that noone else is meant to publish about it. Because of this condition though, the overview was very high level.

Interesting bits from the telomerase conference:

• Three models of the link between telomeres and cell senescence: short telomeres trigger a DNA-damage response; proteins that bind to longer telomeres get released, regulate transcription somehow; the area around the telomeres are tightly bound and therefore those genes suppressed when the telomeres are long, so when they shorten they become active.
• 90% of all malignant tissue has active telomerase
• T cells replicated to exhaustion lack expression of CD28. T cells lacking expression of CD28 become increasingly prevalent in vivo during aging.