衰老 走进千古之谜开启的大门

“科学理论不应该只是已知世界的家政服务员，一种好的科学理论还应该是一把用来开启未知世界大门的钥匙。”

衰老解密？到底意味着什么？让我们走进千古之谜开启的大门，用我们好奇的眼睛，一道领略里面的无限风光 ......

今天先给出一篇英文文摘，待开完会再给出全文及中文译稿。

Aging, after Understanding

Dazhong Yin

Laboratory of Aging Biochemistry, College of Life Sciences, Hunan Normal University

Changsha 410081, Hunan, China

dazhongyin@hotmail.com

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 radical oxidative stress is 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 nanometer-view of life appears to integrate the whole story of life secrets, including physiology, pathology, pharmacology et al. Such nanometer-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.