Fat-remodeling enzyme boosts stem cell activation in old mice
Boosting a fat-remodeling enzyme increased the share of dividing neural stem cells by 97% versus the comparison group in old male mice.
Limit: Stem cell activation is a stand-in for brain function and regeneration
Stake: An author works for Bruker.
Edited by Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
Experiments in male C57BL/6JN mice and their neural stem cells—cells that can produce brain cells—examined how membrane fats changed with age. Researchers compared young mice aged 3 to 5 months with old mice aged 20 to 22 months, studying cells both in mice and in laboratory cultures.
Resting stem cells showed age-related changes in membrane fats. Their outer membranes also became less ordered, both in culture and in mice. Increasing MBOAT2, an enzyme that remodels membrane fats, reversed age-related fat changes in old cultured cells and boosted activation in culture and in mice. Removing its gene worsened fat changes and impaired activation in old cultured cells. Supplying membrane fats from young cells also produced a small improvement in old cultured cells’ ability to become active.
Why it matters
The aging brain’s regenerative stem cell population declines. The authors suggest that lipid-based strategies could help restore these cells’ regenerative potential.
Caveats
Greater stem cell activation does not by itself show improved brain function or regeneration. The experiments used male mice and their cells, not females or people.
- Young neural stem cell plasma membrane lipids
- Metabolomics
- MBOAT2
- Lipid and ceramide metabolism
- Plasma membrane order
- Mice
The paper
Yale University; Stanford University
Science Advances, Jul 29, 2026, Open access
