A new Senescent Cell Biomarker has been discovered
Researchers are making progress in the search for effective biomarkers of senescent cell.
It has been known for a long time that better biomarkers are needed in aging research to detect and confirm senescent cell presence. In recent years, this has become more urgent due to the rapid rise in senescent-cell-clearing therapies called senolytics.
The traditional methods of measuring senescent cells are flawed and have many shortcomings, so it is important to develop better biomarkers. We are sharing a recent publication where researchers make a first step in developing a biomarker.
You can also read about it here
The activation and persistence of senescent cellular cells throughout life promotes tumor suppression, while the absence of these cells is a factor in aging. The inability to isolate and identify individual senescent cell within an intact organism has limited this theory. To achieve this, we created a murine strain reporter by \”knocking in\” a fluorescent tandem-dimer Tomato, tdTom, into exon 1a at the p16INK4a gene locus. This allele (p16tdTom), was used to count, isolate, and characterize p16INK4a expressing cells (tdTom+). The knock-in transcript had a shorter half-life than the endogenous transcript, so reporter expression was better correlated to p16INK4a transcription abundance than promoter activation. Serial passage increased the frequency of tdTom+ fibroblasts in murine embryonic fibroblasts derived from p16tdTom/+ mouse.
Source:
https://www.leafscience.org/new-senescent-cell-biomarker-discovered/
