IMR Press / FBL / Volume 13 / Issue 10 / DOI: 10.2741/2957

Frontiers in Bioscience-Landmark (FBL) is published by IMR Press from Volume 26 Issue 5 (2021). Previous articles were published by another publisher on a subscription basis, and they are hosted by IMR Press on imrpress.com as a courtesy and upon agreement with Frontiers in Bioscience.

Article
MtDNA mutations, functional decline and turnover of mitochondria in aging
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1 Department of Research, Tzu-Chi General Hospital, Hualien 970, Taiwan
2 General Education Center, Tzu-Chi College of Technology, Hualien 970, Taiwan
3 Institute of Medical Sciences, Tzu-Chi University, Hualien 970, Taiwan
4 Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, School of Life Sciences, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei 112, Taiwan

*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

 

Front. Biosci. (Landmark Ed) 2008, 13(10), 3661–3675; https://doi.org/10.2741/2957
Published: 1 May 2008
Abstract

Aging is a complex biological process that involves gradual function deterioration in various tissues and organs of an individual. Mitochondrial function decline can lead to cellular overproduction of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and increase in oxidative damage to biological molecules in the aging process. We have hypothesized that increased production of ROS by the mitochondria in affected tissues in patients with mitochondrial diseases and elderly subject results in increased oxidative stress and oxidative damage. Due to the similarity of human aging process to diseases related to bioenergetic function decline and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) alterations, aging is sometimes viewed as a "chronic" version of such diseases. Recent studies have also established that the expression profiles of several clusters of genes are altered, oxidative modification of proteins are increased and their turnover are decreased in tissues of old human subjects and animals. Accumulating evidence has suggested that mtDNA mutations, oxidative stress, defective disposal of dysfunctional proteins and a slower turnover of mitochondria are associated with aging.

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