I was thinking about a hypothesis that could explain well basically everything. Let’s call it an unified theory of free radicals and disposable soma with an answer why those rats lived 15% longer on olive oil and 90% longer on C60-oo.
Ok, ROS are bad guys. They leak from complex I, III and IV in mitochondria and either damage mitochondria itself or the cell itself. Some of them are very reactive (HO) some of them are quite stabile (H2O2), unless they hit Fe/Cu and become 2 very reactive ones (HO). The rate of production of ROS is somewhere between 0,1 and 10% of consumed 02, but it is generally in the 2-4% range. That generally means 60K "liters of oxygen per kilogram consumed" = death from all those random ROS hits. The exception to that rule are birds which have better mitochondria because of flight and naked mole rats, humans and few deep diving animals that have evolved better defenses against ROS. The reason is hidden in the evolutionary race between high reproducing (low ROS) and long living (high ROS) but handicapped with all those resources that are needed for better ROS defenses. We live only as long as we can improve chanses that "our" genes will live longer then competing ones.
That 60K liters/kg is not a hard limit even in the specific organisms. We can extend that limit by either calorie restriction or with specific chemicals that target some genes. mTOR, FOXO and sirtuins come to my mind. But if you look closer one gene pops up almost always and it’s a nrf-2. Nrf-2 is a strange gene. Type almost any “antioxidant” and it is somehow related to Keap1-Nrf2-ARE pathway.
http://onlinelibrary.../med.21257/full lists following substances as activatos: propolis (CAPE), garlic, bardoxolone methyl, diethyl maleate, quercetin, onion, coffe, resveratrol, green tea, rosmarin, broccoli, cabbage, brussel sprouts, arsen, ALA, selen, carrots, tomatos,.. The list goes on if you search pubmed the list goes on.. olive oil, metformin, chocolade, curumin, ashwaganda, boswellia, ginger,.. and let’s not forget exercise, toxins, radiation,..
So what is Nrf2?
It’s a peptide/gene that gets activated when things get oxidized or come under some kind of stress. For example, Bardoxolane methyl oxidizes glutathione. In response the Nrf2 upregulates about 200 cytoprotective genes. Keap1 is it's antagonist making it a homeostatis system. The interesting thing about Nrf2 is that it is inhibited by NAC, E vitamin and C vitamin. It makes sense. Lower ROS = lower Nrf2 activation. What all that means? Well.. if you eat your greens and eat “antioxidants” (toxins!) then you will have higher ROS protection, high free iron neutralization and upregulated gene and system repair. You will live longer, but since those things are everywhere nobody notices that, except if you have rats that eat boring food that just happens to have none of if. In that case small amounts of olive oil will make your rats live 15% longer. And if you test E vitamins (on humans) you will notice that it increases mortality and you will stop test and declare “E vitamin will kill you”. Nope. Lower Nrf2 activation will kill you.
Ok, now, what happens if you discover super-vitamin-E that is catalytic, does not wear out and happens to embed itself into mitochondrial lipid wall and into any other lipid wall (nucleoid wall?), but other than stopping ROS chain reactions and not wanting to leave lipid wall doesn’t do anything. Well, Nrf2 downregulates. It is upregulated only by all those chemical activators, but from ROS; NOTHING. If this would be your E vitamin test, your mice would die from ROS made from H2O2 catalised by Fe/Cu and by low running DNK and system repair. But, our super-vitamin reduces ROS damage to such a low level that it doesn’t matter. Rats live longer. And remember olive oil that is used to “dissolve C60” still has Nrf2 activators. That should help a little on that subject.
Our super-vitamin-E has changed “regular” mitochondrion into “super efficient, more bird like” mitochondrion. In our rats lifespan went from 60K liters/kg oxygen to 114K liters/kg oxygen before death.
Prediction: C60-oo with potent Nrf-2 activators that cause genetic removal of free iron and upregulate repair as much as possible should increase “liters/kg oxyen before death” even higher. And this could be testable even in short lived animals (yeast, flies, worms) since they all have mitochondria that produce ROS, regulate apoptosis (when x of them die, cell kills itself) and have nrf-2 pathway.
Edited by taho, 22 June 2013 - 01:49 AM.