Aging: Passing of Errors
How do we age? Why do we age? These are important questions in aging researching. Researchers, until recently, thought that cells stopped dividing as people aged. New studies have found that cells continue to divide, but errors are passed during the process, causing changes in our bodies associated with aging. It is the misregulation of genes. The technological advancement that promise to change the future of genetic research is the use of DNA microarrays, or chips, to look at gene-expression patterns. Bits of DNA from known genes are placed on a fingernail-sized chip and exposed to fluorescent light to highlight the active genes. Researchers, through this process, found that only a small number of genes are active in the aging process. Read more.
