Can Your Diet Boost Your Brain Health?
“You are what you eat”, so the saying goes. But how muchyou eat may be just as important. In recent years, dietary restriction has been shown to extend lifespan and improve health — at least, in mice and fruit flies. Dietary restriction has also been linked to slowed brain aging, delaying the onset of cognitive decline. The exact mechanisms by which it does this, however, have remained elusive. Now, researchers at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging may have uncovered a key part of the puzzle. Their findings, published in Nature Communications, suggest that the brain benefits associated with dietary restriction can be traced to a gene called oxidation resistance 1 (OXR1), which helps protect cells from oxidative damage.
Locating Longevity Genes: Fruit flies, with their short lifespan of 40 to 50 days, are ideal for studying longevity. Researchers can quickly observe the effects of environmental or genetic factors, such as diet, on aging and lifespan. To facilitate this work, scientists have developed the Drosophila Genetic Reference Panel (DGRP), a collection of around 200 “standardized” fruit fly lineages.
Excerpted from Forbes
