Oxaloacetate
“Oxaloacetate activates brain mitochondrial biogenesis, enhances the insulin pathway, reduces inflammation and stimulates neurogenesis.” In other words, OAA increases energy production in the brain, improves processing of insulin for greater energy and resistance to type 2 diabetes, lowers autoimmune inflammatory disorders associated with a variety of diseases, and helps grow new neurons in mice.
Fuente: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25027327
Oxaloacetic Acid Supplementation as a Mimic of Calorie Restriction
Reduced dietary intake increases lifespan in a wide variety of organisms. It also retards disease progression. We tested whether dietary supplementation of citric acid cycle metabolites could mimic this lifespan effect. We report that oxaloacetate supplementation increased lifespan in Caenorhabditis elegans. The increase was dependent on the transcription factor, FOXO/DAF-16, and the energy sensor, AMP-activated protein kinase, indicating involvement of a pathway that is also required for lifespan extension through dietary restriction. These results demonstrate that supplementation of the citric acid cycle metabolite, oxaloacetate, influences a longevity pathway, and suggest a tractable means of introducing the health-related benefits of dietary restriction.
Fuente: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2988682/
Mitochondria convert the food we eat, which is useless at the level of molecular biology, into the only form of energy that our cells can use. Simplistically, we might say that this energy is adenosine triphosphate (ATP), but that isn’t the real story.
Adenosine triphospate starts with adenine, one of the four nucleobase letters that our DNA is written in. To this adenine three phosphate groups are attached. The third of these phosphate groups has an unstable but extremely useful molecular bond. Under the right circumstances, it can break free, releasing the electrochemical bonding energy that held it to the adenine and two phosphate groups.
This electrochemical energy can be transferred to other molecules, so they can do what they need to do. The separate pieces can then be recycled by the mitochondria to make more ATP. The mitochondria do this by attaching another phosphate group to the two phosphates left on the adenine handle.
This molecular bonding energy, derived from ATP, runs the biological world. It powers your muscles, your genome, and your very consciousness. When we are young, our mitochondria are literally dynamos. Hundreds to thousands of mitochondria in each cell provide all the power we need to function optimally. In the average human body, there is only about eight ounces or a cup of ATP at any one time. Its energy is utilized and the molecule recycled so rapidly, however, we process our body weight in ATP every day.
Mitochondria are enormously interesting. Functionally, they are remarkably like bacteria and even have their own independent DNA, very similar to bacterial DNA, arranged in a circular plasmid. This, along with the double layer of membrane surrounding the mitochondria, is evidence of the theory that they were once independent bacteria that early eukaryotic cells engulfed. While there are 70 thousand or so coding genes in our genomes, located in our cells’ nuclei, human mitochondria have only 37 genes. Lacking the complex repair mechanisms of the genome, they are unfortunately subject to deterioration as we age.
Though we have traditionally thought of all these trillions of mitochondria in our cells as tiny separate organ-like structures, called organelles, it is more useful to think of them as parts of a network or system. When we, and our mitochondria, were healthy and young, the entire energy grid constantly communicated, via messenger proteins, with its various parts as well as the master genome.
When they function optimally, mitochondria respond to situations, merging and dividing. When we need more energy, they can increase through a process called mitochondrial biogenesis—which is the subject of the paper that spurred this article.
The biological revolution I was referring to earlier is a more complete understanding of the mitochondrial power grid. A critical part of that revolution is the dawning realization that mitochondrial function, degraded due to age or injury, may be repaired if the components needed to produce ATP are abundant.
One of those components is a naturally occurring substance, oxaloacetate, which has been used by significant numbers of people for some time now.