Antioxidants α-lipoic acid, which is a component of several (α-ketoglutarate, branched chain and pyruvate) dehydrogenase complexes and an important facilitator of oxidative metabolism, confers a fascinating memory effect, by fixing the life span of previous feeding regime. When animals are switched early in life from DR to AL and supplemented with α-lipoic acid the DR typical life span extension is maintained, but switching early from AL supplemented with α-lipoic acid to DR blocks the life span extending effect [Merry et al. 2008]. Interestingly, α-lipoic acid was shown in silico and in vitro to be a protein deacetylase inhibitor [Dashwood et al. 2007; van de Mark et al. 2003].

References

Merry BJ, Kirk AJ, Goyns MH (2008) Dietary lipoic acid supplementation can mimic or block the effect of dietary restriction on life span. Mech Ageing Dev 129: 341-348.

Dashwood RH, Ho E (2007) Dietary histone deacetylase inhibitors: from cells to mice to man. Semin Cancer Biol 17: 363-369.

van de Mark K, Chen JS, Steliou K, Perrine SP, Faller DV (2003) Alpha-lipoic acid induces p27Kip-dependent cell cycle arrest in non-transformed cell lines and apoptosis in tumor cell lines. J Cell Physiol 194: 325-340.

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