Longer Lipid Chains Identified as a Shared Ageing Marker in Worms, Flies, Mice and Humans

The chain length of lipids, which handle cell membranes and energy storage, has been observed to grow longer with age in many organisms. Researchers at Amsterdam University Medical Centers (Amsterdam UMC) in the Netherlands proposed in Nature Aging that this "lipid elongation" is an ageing feature conserved across species.

Analysing several tissues from four species at once

The researchers integrated and compared lipidomics data from many tissues of the roundworm C. elegans, fruit flies, mice and humans. They found a repeated shift in ratios with age: lipids with long acyl chains increased and lipids with short chains decreased. Similar lengthening was seen as human heart disease progressed, and conversely, dietary restriction in mice shortened heart lipids.

The researchers focused on Plb1, a lipid-remodelling enzyme that regulates this process. In mice, Plb1 expression levels correlated with lifespan, and in human genome analysis, a causal link with frailty was suggested. When Plb1 was suppressed in worms, lipid lengthening was reversed and lifespan was extended, and this effect depended on lipid length.

However, the lifespan extension was confirmed only in worms, and the abstract does not give the number of human samples or the effect size. Whether lipid lengthening is a cause or a result of ageing also needs further verification.