Kirkwood completes his Radio 4 series about aging on Wednesday, May 2nd. Kirkwood's team has found a method of enhancing nature's genome repair toolkit, which is in the cells of all mammals, by boosting the levels of a specialized protein that mends damaged DNA strands.
Genome damage is thought to be the driving force of the aging process in many theories.
It is also known to be a major factor in the development of cancers. Dr. Alexander Burkle, of Professor Kirkwood's Department of Gerontology at Newcastle University, has studied the mechanisms cells go through to repair damaged DNA in a project funded in part by the European Commission. PARP-1's function as a repair protein has been known about for awhile now, but Dr. Burkle's discovery that 'more means better' surprised researchers, since previous research suggested that quality not quantity was the important factor. During the 19902, Dr. Burkle led a research team that showed variations in the structure of PARP-1 between mammalian species were strongly linked to lifespan. This is thought to be an evolutionary response to risk.