what happens in the gonads does not stay in the gonads - brief notes
Protein aggregates in nematode worm gonads set off the mitochondrial unfolded protein response (UPRmt) that propagates throughout the organism via Wnt signalling, causing changes in mitochondrial function and potentially increasing protein aggregation in distal tissues. It is not known if this happens in mammals. advances.sciencemag.org/con... This news might not be such a big deal as it has already been reported that Wnt signalling is altered in post-menopausal women due to loss of estrogen and rates of neurodegeneration increase after menopause. However, it would be interesting to know whether in mammals insults (possibly caused by infection) to the ovaries earlier in life (and testes?) may propagate the UPRmt throughout the body. ~ If UPRmt is meant to counter stress and clean up misfolded proteins, then why would increasing it be bad? It may actually be good, but there have been conflicting findings, which are reviewed here: The mitochondrial unfolded protein response