Recent scientific research has shed new light on an already-known organelle in plant cells, a discovery that could bring a revolution in human anti-aging. The organelle called the Golgi body had been overlooked but a team of scientists from the University of California Riverside (UCR) has dived into the matter and revealed the true importance of the odd-looking organelle. Thanks to that, science could be one step closer to unravelling the human aging process and to battling it successfully.
The study started because the researchers wanted to discover which parts of the plant cells are responsible for controlling their responses to stress from factors like too little light or too much salt. When doing so, they re-discovered a certain organelle and a protein within it, controlling whether or not plants survive being left too often in the dark. The results of their work were published in Nature Plants Journal.
For us, this finding is a big deal. For the first time, we have defined the profound importance of an organelle in the cell that was not previously implicated in the process of aging.
Katie Dehesh, professor of molecular biochemistry at UCR
The so-called Golgi body consists of cup-shaped membrane-covered sacs. The organelle is responsible for sorting the molecules in the cell, making sure they get to the right places. Within the Golgi body, a protein called COG controls and coordinates the movement of small sac “envelopes” in which molecules within the cell are moved around. In short, the COG helps the Golgi body by attaching sugars to other proteins or lipids, after which they are sent to somewhere else within the cell – a process called glycosylation.
“Golgi are like the post office of the cell. They package and send out proteins and lipids to where they’re needed. A damaged Golgi can create confusion and trouble in the cell’s activities, affecting how the cell works and stays healthy”, explained Heeseung Choi, a researcher in UCR’s Botany and Plant Sciences Department and first author of the study.
When modifying plants so that they could not use the proteins, the researchers discovered this didn’t change much under normal conditions. However, when the plant didn’t receive enough sunlight, the importance of COG became clear. “In the dark, the COG mutants showed signs of aging that typically appear in wild, unmodified plants around day nine. But in the mutants, these signs manifested in just three days”, Choi said.
Even though the results are interesting on the plant level alone, they become even more interesting knowing that the Golgi body is also present in humans and all eukaryotic organisms (organisms whose cells have a membrane-bound nucleus – all animals, plants, fungi and many unicellular organisms). Therefore, knowing what role the organelle play in plant aging means the researchers also got a better understanding of the human aging process. The team behind the study will continue their research, eventually hoping to be able to change how humans age.
