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Version 1
Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed
The Mitochondrion as the Major Basis of Brain Aging
Version 1
: Received: 19 February 2024 / Approved: 19 February 2024 / Online: 20 February 2024 (06:02:00 CET)
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Bondy, S.C. Mitochondrial Dysfunction as the Major Basis of Brain Aging. Biomolecules 2024, 14, 402. Bondy, S.C. Mitochondrial Dysfunction as the Major Basis of Brain Aging. Biomolecules 2024, 14, 402.
Abstract
The changes in the properties of three biological events, that occur with cerebral aging, are discussed. These adverse changes already begin to develop early in mid-life and gradually become more pronounced with senescence. Essentially, they are reflections of the progressive decline in effectiveness of key processes, resulting in the deviation of essential biochemical trajectories to ineffective and ultimately harmful variants of these programs.
The emphasis of this review is the major role played by mitochondria in such transition of these three important processes toward more deleterious variants as brain aging proceeds.
1. The immune system. The shift away from an efficient immune response to a more unfocused, continuing inflammatory condition. Such a state is both ineffective and harmful.
2. Reactive oxygen species are important intracellular signaling systems. Also, microglial phagocytic activity utilizing short lived reactive oxygen species contribute to the removal of aberrant or dead cells and bacteria. These processes are transformed into an excessive, untargeted and persistent generation of pro-oxidant free radicals (oxidative stress).
3. The normal efficient neural transmission is modified to a state of undirected, chronic low-level excitatory activity.
Each of these changes is characterized by the occurrence of continuous activity that is inefficient and diffuse. The signal/noise ratio of several critical biological events is thus reduced as beneficial responses are gradually replaced by their impaired and deleterious variants.
Keywords
Brain agung; Mitochondria; Inlammation; Excitotoxicity; Oxidative stress
Subject
Biology and Life Sciences, Aging
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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