Glycobiology in the field of aging research--introduction to glycogerontology

In populations where demographies are shifting towards increased average age, the importance of gerontology is also increasing. The main purpose of gerontology is to elucidate the mechanisms of deterioration, which occur in various parts of the human body through aging, and use this knowledge to improve quality of life among the elderly. By the elucidation of the human genome, a revolutionary development is expected to occur in the field of medical science in the near future. Many important genes related to the aging processes of various organs have already been found and are expected to be useful in the future development of geriatric medicine. However, most of the proteins produced by the human body contain sugar chains, whose importance as biosignals for multi-cellular organisms was revealed by the recent development of the new field of glycobiology. Since sugar chains are formed as secondary gene products by the concerted action of glycosyltransferases, the structures of sugar chains are less strictly regulated than proteins. Accordingly, most of the biosignals associated with sugar chains are not essential for the maintenance of life itself, but are necessary to maintain the ordered social life of cells constructing multi-cellular organisms. Hence, investigation of structural changes of sugar chains that is caused by aging is expected to produce quite a lot of useful information pertaining to the elucidation of diseases induced by aging. This review will summarize our current knowledge of such changes found in the sugar chains of glycoconjugates resulting from the aging process.