Of all the things your poor mother has done for you — count sagging skin among them.
New research out of Sweden suggests the defective genes that speed up aging are more are passed down from your mom, according to a report in Australian news outlet news.com.au.
The study conducted by researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden found that mutations in mother mice led to more age-related problems in their offspring.
Researchers found that damage to mitochondrial DNA contributes more to aging than mutations in the cell’s nucleus. And mitochondrial DNA is only passed down from the mother.
“If we inherit mDNA with mutations from our mother, we age more quickly,” said study leader Professor Nils-Goran Larsson, leader of the study.
Mitochondrion act as tiny power plants, dismantling nutrients and providing a cell with most of its chemical energy. It differs from the nucleus, which acts like the brain of the cell and contains most of the its DNA.
The researchers found that the DNA in mitochondria is more likely to randomly change as cells reproduce than the DNA in the nucleus — and that means genetic mistakes that exacerbate aging and cause other problems are more likely to occur, as mom’s mutations are added one’s own errors.
The findings were reported in the current issue of the journal Nature.
“Our findings can shed more light on the aging process and prove that the mitochondria play a key part in aging,” Larsson said. “They show that it’s important to reduce the number of mutations.”