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How a tiny genetic change inflicts old age on young kids

Scientists identify a molecule key to the development of progeria, a lethal disease that causes hyper-accelerated ageing.
A composite of six images showing Masson-stained oesophagi derived from mice.

Mice with a version of the disease progeria have abnormal oesophagi (middle, top; detail middle, bottom). Mice treated with a newly developed molecule have oesophagi (right) similar to those of mice without the condition (left). Credit: N. Zhang et al./Nature Aging (CC BY 4.0)

Children with the rare disease progeria show signs of old age while they are still toddlers, and few survive past their teens. Now scientists have designed a molecule that extends the lives of mice genetically engineered to have progeria symptoms1.

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Nature 614, 392 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00355-z

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 15 February 2023: An earlier version of the caption accompanying this article misidentified the pictured tissue.

References

  1. Zhang, N. et al. Nature Aging https://doi.org/10.1038/s43587-023-00361-w (2023).

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