Genes and Antiaging Medicine: Genome Instability and Antiaging

Genome instability has been continuously highlighted as one of the main causes of aging. Our body cells are constantly exposed to various external factors that cause DNA damage, such as reactive oxygen species, ultraviolet rays, radiation, and chemicals. However, through complex genome repair mechanisms, damage is removed, restored to the correct base sequence, and homeostasis is maintained. However, when this mechanism does not work well, and the replication of the genome is not correctly done during cell division, or abnormalities occur in epigenetic modifications, it is known that mutations accumulate in various organs and tissues of animals such as humans, mice, and flies, which also serves as corroborative evidence for the aging theory of “error accumulation.” However, it is not clear whether the frequency of these random changes is sufficient to influence phenotypes generally associated with aging. On the other hand, it is clear that cancer is an aging-related disease caused by the accumulation of mutations and epimutations (changes in epigenetic modifications without changes in the DNA sequence itself), and it needs to be considered separately from general aging. The accumulation of genetic mutations with aging disrupts cellular homeostasis, brings about genome instability, and all body cell mutations, chromosomal aneuploidy, and copy mutations are factors that exacerbate DNA damage.