The Salk Institute for Biological Studies has announced a $1.3 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation in support of researchers studying the aging of the brain and heart.

While some tissues—such as skin, bones, and skeletal muscles—can regenerate to stave off age-related decline, vital organs such as the brain and heart irreversibly decline in function over time. The funding will support a novel investigation led by professor Rusty Gage and assistant professor Pallav Kosuri into ribosubstitution events—cellular repair of DNA damage with RNA building blocks rather than DNA building blocks—which may be responsible for this difference. Researchers plan to catalogue ribosubstitution events across the span of human life using donated tissue samples, as well as by developing their own single-cell sequencing technology and repurposing existing mapping methods.

“The imbalance between RNA and DNA in neurons and cardiomyocytes increases the likelihood of ribosubstitution events that weaken the integrity of DNA and that—we think—could be causing some of the irreversible damage we see accrue over time in the heart and the brain,” said Kosuri. “With support from the Keck Foundation, we look forward to developing new technology to map the effects of ribosubstitution in aging neurons and cardiomyocytes.”

(Photo credit: Getty Images/fizkes)