Is carbonyl detoxification an important anti-aging process during sleep?

• Organisms living on the earth may undergo inevitable toxification by biological 'garbage', a variety of biometabolites. Such garbage includes a particularly large number of toxic carbonyls, such as a,▀-unsaturated carbonyls created by free radicals, glycation, and other post-translational side-reactions during various stresses and diseases. The accumulation of these toxic substances and their crosslinking products leads to the formation of different age pigments, such as lipofuscin, lens cataracts, and crosslinked collagen. The diurnal fluctuation in the concentration of the pineal gland hormone, melatonin, may be responsible for the 'cleaning activities' that reverse the covalently-bound semi-toxified proteins and nucleic acids. This toxification-cleaning cycle may explain the biochemical necessity for sleep of human and animals during aging. (C) 2000 Harcourt Publishers Ltd.

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