Researchers at Stanford University in California have reserved the effects of aging on the skin of mice through blocking the action of a single critical protein. The implications of this study, if able to be replicated successfully in human beings, is monumental. It could potentially revolutionize the medical and dermatology industries.

Howard Chang, MD, PhD, and assistant professor of dermatology at Stanford, said that the work could one day be useful in helping older people heal from an injury as quickly as they did when they were younger. However, the researchers warned that the findings are not likely to be as successful in younger people, rather, it is more likely to be useful in short-term therapies in older adults. Even then, however, their discovery is not likely to be the holy grail fountain of youth.

Scientists believe that the study backs up theories that aging is the result of specific genetic changes, rather than accumulated wear and tear. Furthermore, they believe that these genetic changes can be reversed later in life.

The study arose thanks to data that already existed from experiments using microarrays, which detect activity of all genes in a cell. In past experiments, researchers found a large number of diverse cells that become either more active or less active in older adults.

Researchers in this study searched through the existing data to see whether those age-related genes had anything in common. As it turned out, their activity gets ramped up or turned down with the help of a protein called NF-kappa-B.

It was long known that NF-kappa-b works its way into a cell's nucleus to control which genes were active, however they did not know that many of those genes that the protein regulates were involved in the aging process.

The full results of this study are to be published in the December 15, 2007 edition of the Journal of Genes & Development.