Aging, after Understanding

Dazhong Yin
Laboratory of Aging Biochemistry, Hunan Normal University, Hunan, China

Following enormous achievements of study of genomics and proteomics, a systems biology-directed metabonomics is emerging and directed a quick development of life sciences which calls for "emergent characters" to describe running life with some general indexes. Such general "emergent characters" of life happen to be well studied in the field of gerontology and geriatrics which are expressed as phenotypes of various life stresses, in which most important examples are oxidative stress and glycation stress covering most, if not all, principal side-reactions of entropy-underlied energy metabolisms. The "irreparable damage accumulation (like lipofuscin) of biological side-reactions" is pinpointed by our group as "the essential mechanisms of aging" where carbonyl stress stays at the center of stresses of macro-biomolecules. While free radicals are not directly proportional to aging alterations, the aging accumulation does, namely, the accumulation biochemistry does, such as the development of advanced glycation end-products (AGEs). When carbonyl stress links both free radical- and glycation-related degenerative diseases, the complicated investigation of metabonomics becomes simplified, energy consumption is a key!

"Aging is no more a problem in biology", "Entropy decides aging, genes decide longevity" as Drs. Holliday and Hayflick recently concluded. A more profound understanding of aging nature may now be extracted, namely, the aging mechanisms is based on a deeper level, the functional group level of biomolecules. When life scientists inspect functional groups at the sub-molecular level, penetrating genomes and proteomes, a clear nano-view of life appears to integrate the whole story of life secrets, including physiology, pathology, pharmacology et al. Such nano-view of life science seems to be a brilliant access to understand the time-directed biochemistry, the aging process in depth. More interesting advantages come after the understanding: potential understanding of sleep biochemistry, simple explanation of sub-health situations, and integration of modern medicine with traditional Chinese medication and strategies. In general, applications of aging biochemistry are showing to be even more important and attractive than understanding aging per se.