Padlocks

Look in the mirror and note that The skin is no longer what it once was. He thinned, loses tone, becomes fragile like tissue paper. It is the price of aging, you know. The epidermis that for years has protected us from the outside world begins to yield, layer after layer. But if there was a way to awaken its ability to regenerate?

Al Tokyo Metropolitan Institute for Geriatrics and Gerontologya group of researchers led by Akihito Ishigami investigated the dermatological benefits of Vitamina Ca substance whose positive effect on the skin was, in reality, already known: “Vitamin C would seem to influence the structure and function of the epidermis, in particular by controlling cell growth”, explains Ishigami. “But in this study, we have investigated if it is also able to promote proliferation and cell differentiation through epigenetic changes“.

The secret of vitamin C for the skin

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For years we have known that our genes can be turned on or off, as switches. And aging tends to turn off several. To understand what happens to the epidermis, over time, the researchers have recreated human skin in the laboratory, applying vitamin C in the same concentrations circulating in the blood. The discovery was that after a week the treated skin showed a visibly more often layer And the Ki-67 marker, which reports when the cells are dividing, had increased significantly. On the fourteenth day the effect was even more evident: the internal layer of the epidermis continued to be thickened while the external one thinned. As if the skin had found the production rhythm of youth.

But how does vitamin C get these results? According to the researchers, during aging, small chemical groups called methyls attach themselves to the DNA as the padlocks that block access to entire sections of our genetic code. Vitamin C, in essence, removes these padlocks through a process called demethmentationsupporting special enzymes, the tets (ten-connoisseur translocation), which do dirty work. These enzymes, however, need iron to work, and here is the makeup: during the reaction the iron oxidizes, passing from Fe2+ to Fe3+, and stops working. Vitamin C intervenes by giving electrons and regenerating iron. A bit like supplying petrol an engine that would otherwise stop.

c as a key

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The study identified beyond 10,000 DNA regions that would thus “unlock” by vitamin C and 12 fundamental genes for cell proliferation that increase their activity from 1.6 up to 75 times. To be sure of their discovery, scientists also made the counter -proof: by blocking the tet enzymes with a specific inhibitor, all the beneficial effects of vitamin C disappeared. The skin returned to behave like the aged one. Which would show that they are right and bodes well for the development of future care: “Vitamin C helps to inspected the skin By stimulating the proliferation of keratinocytes through the demethment of DNA “, summarizes Ishigami.” And this could make it a promising treatment For the skin that begins to thin, especially in the elderly “.