Aging and Disease: 2.4 Cell Sensecence, Changes In Molecular Turnover

• Aging
• beta amyloid
• mitochondria
• Telomeres

Effective maintenance is a product of the rate and the quality of the maintenance process. If we look at a car, for example, the long-term condition of the car depends on how often we institute maintenance (once a month or once every few years?) and the quality of the maintenance procedures (do you replace and repair everything or do you simply change the oil?). If we look at a house, the same questions apply: do you maintain it regularly (every few months?) and do you maintain it thoroughly (do you just vacuum the carpets or do you replace and repair the paint, the pipes, the roof, and the windows?). If we look at a garden, again we find the same issues: how often do you maintain it (once a day or once a year?) and how thoroughly do you care for the garden (do you merely mow the lawn or do you weed, fertilize, trim, and replant?).

Cars, houses, and gardens are not immortal and unchanging. To remain viable, they require maintenance: the more frequent the maintenance and the more detailed and careful the maintenance, then the longer-lasting they are. A well-cared for car, house, or garden can – in effect – be “immortal”. If the maintenance is sufficiently frequent and of sufficiently high-quality, then they appear to resist entropy without any apparent change.

The same is true of cells. Whether we look at proteins, lipids, or almost any other molecular pool, we discover that they are in continual equilibrium: they are continually being produced and continually broken down. There is no molecular pool in the body that remains untouched by the years; whether rapidly or slowly, every molecular pool is in the process of being recycled. The one odd exception is our DNA, which isn’t recycled, but repaired in situ. While we repair our DNA, we simply replace everything else. Even in the case of DNA, however, the molecules that do the repairing are themselves being continually replaced.

The result of all of this recycling is that the cells are generally able to functional. To use the analogy of the Red Queen from Alice In Wonderland, our cells run as quickly as they can in order to stay in one place. Moreover, the faster they run (recycle) the more they are able to stay in one place (fully functional). Or, as the French saying has it “plus ça change, plus c’est la même” (the more things change, the more they stay the same).

The problem comes about when we slow the rate of turnover. The slower this “recycling” rate, the more we tend to see damage. This occurs even if the rate of damage is unchanged. The more critical variable is not the rate of damage, but the rate of turnover. Alas, as our telomeres shorten and our cells senesce, this rate of turnover goes down. We still create molecules – the collagen and elastin molecules in our skin for example – and we still destroy molecules. The rate of creation and destruction is perfectly balanced, so the total number of molecules available at any one time remains unchanged, but the rate at which those molecules are turned over falls with cell senescence.

The upshot is that damage accrues.

Let’s take a typical intracellular molecular protein. A young cell might (hypothetically) have a thousand molecules of this protein and might every day destroy 500 of these molecules and create 500 of these molecules, so that every day it might “recyle” 50% of the molecules. The pool size doesn’t change, but the molecules are changed regularly. An old cell, however, might (hypothetically) have the same thousand molecules of this protein, but create only 50 of the molecules and destroy on 50 the molecules, so that every day it might “recycle” only 5% of the molecules. While the number of molecules available to the cell (1000) remains unchanged, the slower turnover means that any time a molecule becomes damaged, it will be replaced much more slowly. In short, the problem isn’t so much the damage per se, as it is the rate at which the cell maintains itself. The “older” the cell (i.e., the more senescent the gene expression), the slower the rate of molecular turnover and the higher the percentage of damaged molecules (see Figure 2.4a).

To invoke another analogy, if the damage is the rate at which your family produces garbage and the turnover rate (the “recyclilng” rate) is the frequency of garbage pickup, then imagine what happens if you go from once-a-week garbage pickup to once-a-year garbage pickup. Conceptually, this is much the same problem that occurs in cells as they senesce. The solution is not to adjust the rate at which you produce garbage, but the rate of garbage pick-up. To take this analogy back to the cell, the solution is not to adjust the rate of damage (through UV, spontaneous racemization, free radicals, etc.), but to adjust the rate of turnover. Young cells have high rates of turnover and low percentages of damaged molecules; old cells have low rates of turnover and high percentages of damaged molecules.

To take this into a clinical venue, this applies to wrinkles in our skin (in which, for example) collagen and elastin turnover are slower), in Alzheimer’s disease (in which, for example, beta amyloid turnover is slower), and in mitochondria (in which, for example, aerobic enzymes and molecules on the lipid bilayers have slower turnover. In every example of aging and age-related disease – with no exception – we can trace the changes to slower molecular turnover.

For those who might like to get a firmer (and more mathematical) grasp on how this works, consider the following equation and its implications (from my textbook, Cells, Aging, and Human Disease; Oxford University Press, 2004):

If the rate of damage (here arbitrarily 1% of molecules/day) and the total number of molecules in the pool (here 100%) remain constant, but the turnover rate varies (r = the percentage of molecules replaced/day), then the percentage of damaged molecules (X) on day (N) will be XN. At equilibrium, XN = XN-1. This can be calculated as the per cent damaged on a particular day, plus the number of damaged molecules remaining from the previous day (XN-1 times M), minus the number of previously damaged molecules replaced during the past day (XN-1 times r), divided by the total percentage of molecules (M) in the cell. At equilibrium:

Equilibrium protein damage: X = 1 + [X(100 -r)/100]

If the molecular turnover rate (r) is 50%, then:

X = 1 + 0.5X

X = 2

Given a damage rate of 1%, if the turnover rate were 50%, then at equilibrium, 2% of the molecules are damaged on any given day. If the molecular turnover rate (r) is 2%, then:

X = 1 +.98X

X = 50

Given a damage rate of 1%, if the turnover rate were only 2%, then at equilibrium, 50% of available molecules have been damaged (see Fossel; Reversing Human Aging, 1996; p 260). Turnover rates – whether protein, lipid, or other molecules – have a profound effect on the burden of damaged molecules within a cell, i.e., on cell dysfunction.

In the next few blogs, we will see how this process affects: first, the most common intracellular molecules (2.5), then how it affects DNA (2.6), then mitochondrial molecules (2.7), and finally extracellular molecules (2.8)

Next Time: 2.5 Cell Senescence, Changes In Molecular Turnover, Most Molecules