In yeast at least, the aging process appears to reduce an
organism’s ability to silence certain genes that need to be silenced. Now
researchers at Brown University who study the biology of aging have shown that
the loss of genetic control occurs in fruit flies as well. Results appear
online in the journal Aging.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Biologists at Brown
University have found a way to measure the effects of aging by watching the ebb
and flow of chromatin, a structure along strands of DNA that either silences or
permits gene expression. In several newly published experiments they show that
gene silencing via chromatin in fruit flies declines with age.