Popular Press Review

This web page was produced as an assignment for Gen677 at UW-Madison Spring 2009

Popular press Review of  "Stanford researchers uncover link between two aging pathways".  
from Stanford StoryBank by Krista, Conger

I reviewed the article "Stanford researchers uncover link between two aging pathways"  this article helps bring to light to the general public how SIRT6, another family member of the proteins know as sirtuins, plays a role in aging process.  The article attempts to describe the science that was done to find that SIRT6 also affects the key enzyme know as NF-kB to control it and thus restrain genes associated with aging. 

The article "link between two aging pathways" gives the reader a sense that aging is now beginning to be viewed as a deliberate process and not just a wearing out of an organism.  They go on to explain that the process of aging is a genetic process controlled by certain genes and these genes can lead to the phenotype of aging.  One of the genes believed to control aging is SIRT6, which they describe as being a member of the sirtuin family of proteins which other members of the family have been shown to control life span.  They give some back ground on previous work on SIRT6 that found SIRT6 to control telemores, which are considered a kind of molecular clock associated with aging of the cell.  The article then goes on to explain that the researchers found that SIRT6 also regulates another aging pathway which involves a protein known as NF-kB.  The writer then goes on to explain that NF-kB is a protein that binds to and regulates genes involved in aging.  Then the article describes that the researchers found that SIRT6 binds to a subunit of NF-kB and when NF-kB binds to DNA SIRT6 modifies the DNA such that SIRT6 makes it harder for NF-kB to turn on gene associated with aging.  The article then explains that the researchers came to this conclusion through observing SIRT6 knockout mice, and that these mice showed elevated levels of NF-kB gene activity.  And these mice would die at 4 weeks of age and when they reduced NF-kB levels the mice were able to live past this 4 week period.  

This article does a good job of simplifying the actual science such that the general public can understand it while maintain  enough detail of the pathways that the writers don’t dilute out to much of the actual scientific work.  I also liked the background on SIRT6 by the way they described that SIRT6 was found to affect telemores first.  After that I found little of this article I actually liked, for example the reference to aging as a degeneration of tissues and how they jokingly say “even facial skin with which we all struggle “.  I feel this creates a tone that this research is in some way a joke because it has to do with aging.  And also this notion of skin aging also give the notion of those fake skin cream that promise to removal all your wrinkles.   The paper furthermore I feel gives a jaded background on the NF-kB protein, they only describe it as a protein that turns on genes associated with aging.  This is not precisely the case because NF-kB is involved in many important processes like immune response, cell death, and inflammation and not all of these process only cause aging.  I feel this is an overgeneralization of what the NF-kB does gives the sense to the reader that NF-kB is somehow bad because it makes use age.  

Forgiving the article for its short falls, the paper does a good job of explaining how the researchers went about finding how SIRT6 regulates NF-kB function like how they used SIRT6 knockout mice and then human cells and saw the same effect that loss of SIRT6 lead to increase NF-kB gene expression.  I also liked how the writers went on to explain where the researchers would like to go from here to further determine how this mechanism of SIRT6 and NF-kB is turned on later in life.   And while the writer I feel did not give sufficient detail of the scientific function of SIRT6 and NF-kB they were able to generalize it in such a way that I feel most people would be able to understand. 

Reference
Conger, Krista. (2009).  Stanford researchers uncover link between two aging pathways.  Stanford StoryBank.  Retrieved from http://storybank.stanford.edu/stories/stanford-researchers-uncover-link-between-two-aging-pathways

Mark Devries
Email [email protected]
last updated 1/22/09
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