期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2019
卷号：116
期号：41
页码：20482-20488
DOI：10.1073/pnas.1905722116
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：A new evaluation of previously published data suggested to us that the accumulation of mutations might slow, rather than increase, as individuals age. To explain this unexpected finding, we hypothesized that normal stem cell division rates might decrease as we age. To test this hypothesis, we evaluated cell division rates in the epithelium of human colonic, duodenal, esophageal, and posterior ethmoid sinonasal tissues. In all 4 tissues, there was a significant decrease in cell division rates with age. In contrast, cell division rates did not decrease in the colon of aged mice, and only small decreases were observed in their small intestine or esophagus. These results have important implications for understanding the relationship between normal stem cells, aging, and cancer. Moreover, they provide a plausible explanation for the enigmatic age-dependent deceleration in cancer incidence in very old humans but not in mice..
关键词：cell division ; aging ; cancer ; mutation rate
