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Progeria And Lamin A: Research To Date
(Wednesday December 14 2005)
 | From Medical News Today, a look back at two years of amazing progress in Progeria research: "researchers made a breakthrough in 2003, tracing [Progeria] to a spontaneous mutation in a gene encoding an important structural component of the cell nucleus, the organelle in which our DNA is stored, read out, and copied. ... The second set of results reveals mutant [lamin A] proteins turning up in the wrong place - too tightly linked to the membranes of the nuclear envelope - to be of much help during key stages of the cell cycle. The researchers believe that this localization failure of mutated [lamin A] proteins would severely compromise the ability of [Progeria] cells to engage in normal DNA replication, a probable factor in their rapid march to premature senescence. Whether similar missteps and miscues by nuclear lamins are part of 'normal' human aging is the question that draws researchers onward." |
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