Genetic engineering of mice to test the oxidative damage theory of aging

The laboratory mouse Mus musculus domesticus provides the best current mammalian models for the genetic analysis of aging. We give a brief overview of the use of transgenic manipulations to test the oxidative damage theory of aging. These manipulations are of two types: The first approach engineers mice that exhibit increased sensitivities to oxidative damage and thus produces mice that are likely to be short-lived. The second approach engineers mice to be more resistant to such injuries, and thus may produce mice that exhibit enhanced longevities, something that is much harder to engineer. The latter result is thus more meaningful, with the caveat that it may result from some special vulnerability of a particular lab strain or lab strains in general. The first approach, most elegantly carried out by Arlan Richardson's laboratory, provides evidence against the oxidative damage theory. My colleagues and I have been engaged in the second approach and have accumulated evidence supporting the theory. These conventional transgenic experiments, however, should be supplemented by alternative genetic approaches. One that is surprisingly neglected takes advantage of the pleuripotency of embryonic stem cells and the power of somatic cell genetics. A cautionary note is that interventions that minimize oxidative stress may be complicated by unwanted compromises of physiologically adaptive actions such as superoxide signaling and the possible protective effects of certain oxidatively modified proteins.