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ELECTRONIC TRIGGER. “When a photon hits a visual pigment, the chromophore changes from a 11-cis-retinal conformation to an all-trans-retinal, initiating the phototransduction cascade that leads to vision.” The nerve impulses then get chunked and reassembled by the brain into a cartoonized reality. https://lnkd.in/dsvuECMN View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this summary of the components of inflammation that contribute to both ageing and the chronic diseases of ageing. One can argue that trees drop their leaves in the autumn because they have accumulated considerable environmental and parasitic damage during the active summer period, and it is less difficult to start over and make a new leaf than to fix the numerous sites of cellular damage. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-018-0059-4 View in LinkedIn

PATHWAYS. “Several cellular and molecular mechanisms are involved in inflammaging, including cellular senescence, mitochondrial dysfunction, defective autophagy and mitophagy, activation of the inflammasome, dysregulation of the ubiquitin–proteasome system, activation of the DNA damage response and dysbiosis (changes in the composition of the host microbiota).” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-018-0059-4 View in LinkedIn

CELLULAR CORE. “This chronic, sterile (occurring in the absence of infection and primarily driven by endogenous signals), low-grade inflammation that occurs during ageing is called inflammaging. A major characteristic of inflammaging is the chronic activation of the innate immune system, in which the macrophage has a central role.” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-018-0059-4 View in LinkedIn

THE ROOF COLLAPSES. “Interestingly, the tightly networked ageing pillars converge on inflammation, as impairment of any one pillar fuels inflammation, which subsequently affects all the other pillars.” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-018-0059-4 View in LinkedIn

THE CORE. “Fig. 1: The seven pillars of ageing. The seven pillars are inflammation, stem cell regeneration, macromolecular damage, stress, proteostasis, metabolism and epigenetics. The relationships between the pillars are shown by the interconnected network. The pillars are shared by ageing and age-related diseases.” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-018-0059-4 View in LinkedIn

HOLISTIC APPROACH. “Accordingly, the new geroscience approach proposes to counteract all major age-related diseases together, and not individually, by focusing on the basic ageing mechanisms underlying these diseases.” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-018-0059-4 View in LinkedIn

INTERCONNECTED SYSTEMS. “Even more importantly, these pillars do not operate separately but are interconnected, influencing and modulating each other, thus constituting an integrated network.” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-018-0059-4 View in LinkedIn

THE MECHANISMS. “The great novelty is that experimental data have emerged that suggest that there are few pillars (adaptation to stress, epigenetics, inflammation, macromolecular damage, metabolism, proteostasis, stem cells and regeneration).” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-018-0059-4 View in LinkedIn

AGEING = DISEASE. “The basic assumption of geroscience is that the mechanisms driving ageing and age-related diseases largely overlap, and seven common ‘pillars’ (which are mechanisms of ageing and major areas of research) have been identified.” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-018-0059-4 View in LinkedIn