I do hope to resume normal operations before too much longer, and to get back to the fascinating and important topics we’ve been looking at recently. A lingering ennui and lack of mental focus have hampered my attempts to get properly back in harness just yet; I look forward to the salutary effects of sea air, ample sleep, healthful exercise, absence from Midtown, and deliverance from enforced labor — all of which will commence this coming weekend, and last until after Labor Day.
Meanwhile: researcher Dr. Ana Maria Cuervo, of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University, has been working on the mechanisms by which the body rids itself of accumulating protein wastes. This system of “protein clearance”, like just about everything else, works less well as we get older, and in turn the accumulation of toxins in our cells leads to many of the other indignities of advancing decrepitude.
Dr. Cuervo (with whose cousin Jose I have been all too familiar for a great many years, to the cumulative detriment of my own cellular resilience) has now succeeded in halting the decline of this system in the livers of mice, by introducing a suitable genetic modification. This is, I think, pretty big news, and I think she is starting with exactly the right organ.
Learn more here.