Mitochondria play an essential role in maintaining cellular health. When damaged, they are removed through a recycling process called mitophagy, which is crucial for the function of long-lived cells, especially in the brain. Impaired mitophagy has been strongly associated with neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, making it a critical focus for drug discovery and therapeutic innovation.
New research from the McWilliams Lab at the University of Helsinki, spearheaded by doctoral researcher Anna Rappe, MSc, reveals a changing and unexpected landscape of mitophagy across in different brain cell types during the aging process. The research is published in The EMBO Journal . For example, mitophagy levels increased in a specialized mouse brain region responsible for movement as the animals aged, while in memory-related brain cells, mitophagy first rose and then sharply declined in old age.
These findings identify midlife as a key inflection point for healthy brain aging, offering novel insights into the molecular mechanisms that sustain mammalian brain function. Another key finding of the study was that some lysosomes, the structures responsible for breaking down cellular waste, lose acidity as the brain ages. This exciting observation parallels changes observed in Alzheimer's disease models, suggesting that the processes seen in normal aging might be exacerbated in the development of neurodegenerative conditions.
The results challenge previous assump.
