3 Questions: MIT biologist on new resveratrol study
In the early 1990s, MIT professor Leonard Guarente discovered that sirtuins, a class of proteins found in nearly all animals, protect against the effects of aging in yeast; similar effects have since been seen in many other organisms. In 2003, David Sinclair, who had been a postdoc in Guarente’s lab, found that resveratrol, a compound found in grapes and red wine, can also counteract the effects of aging. Since then, many scientists have tried to tease out the exact relationship among sirtuins, resveratrol and aging. In a paper appearing this week in Science, a team led by Sinclair, now a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, shows for the first time that resveratrol and similar compounds act by directly activating sirtuins. Guarente, the Novartis Professor of Biology at MIT, discusses the significance of the new finding. Q: There has been some scientific disagreement over whether resveratrol helps sirtuins to...