MicroRNA-128: A Master Switch for Muscle Aging
An old mouse hangs on a wire two-thirds longer than a mouse its own age, and after running on a treadmill it doesn't collapse from exhaustion. The difference isn't training or diet: the mice had a single molecule suppressed, and their muscles worked like they did in youth. That molecule is microRNA-128-3p, a short chain of nucleotides that silences entire groups of genes.