What is it about?
We found that when we are aged, cells at the back of the eye named Retinal pigment epithelia (RPE) increase in size and some of them become multinucleated, i.e. one cell contains two or more nuclei. We further found that oxidative stress could induces multinucleation. We believe that multinucleation is a mechanism for RPE cells to deal with oxidative insults to survival and to maintain function.
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Why is it important?
A healthy layer of RPE cell is essential for visual function, and age-related RPE cell damage underlies the pathology of age-related macular degeneration. Currently we do not know why RPE cells die in AMD patients, but maintain health in other old people. We show that RPE cells maintain health in the aging eye through multinucleation. Further understanding the mechanism of RPE multinucleation will shed light on the pathogenesis of age-related macular degeneration and may identify novel targets for therapy.
Perspectives
RPE cells are considered as post-mitotic cells. During aging, some RPE cells die from oxidative insults, and the remaining RPE cells will have to repair the damaged area to maintain an intact, functional RPE monolayer. How this is achieved in the healthy aging eye is not known. We believe that multinucleation is one of the mechanisms.
Professor Heping Xu
Queen's University Belfast
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Retinal pigment epithelial cell multinucleation in the aging eye - a mechanism to repair damage and maintain homoeostasis, Aging Cell, February 2016, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/acel.12447.
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