Two LSU assistant professors discovered a new class of lysosomes that could potentially reverse aging.

The research duo, Adam Bonhert and Alyssa Johnson, met in graduate school at Vanderbilt and are now married. They did not plan to combine their research, but after working on separate postdocs, their projects ended up converging. 

“As part of my postdoctoral training I started working on lysosomes and studying the biology of lysosomes and how they’re regulated,” Bohnert said. “Something that I’ve been particularly interested in is how lysosomes can influence aging or maybe entry points to control or regulate the aging process.”

Johnson said that neither of the two initially planned on studying lysosomes. Bonhert’s research was concentrated in germ cell rejuvenation, and Johnson was more interested in age-related ailments. 

“One of the things that we found with one of the genes we were working with is that it affected the lysosomes,” Johnson said. 

This discovery made Johnson interested in the basic biology of lysosomes. She noticed that most of the previous work done on lysosomes was done using a marker called “lamp one”, the traditional protein used to mark lysosomes. She chose to take a different approach and use a newer gene called “spinster” as their marker. She found that it was brighter and more consistent.

When she used live imaging in different tissues, she found muscles with a tubular network. She had never seen this in their study, so she wanted to study the basic biological importance of it and how widely conserved it is. 

Bohnert explained that lysosomes are able to digest a lot of molecular waste and build up molecular damage with age. Lysosomes can act to get rid of some of this damage by activating lysosomes in old cells. Bohnert thinks that this new-found class called “tubular lysosomes” could be uniquely equipped to reset the state of homeostasis, and limit the effects of aging. 

Johnson and Bohnert have been awarded a three-year, $1 million grant for their research. They said the next step for them is to explore and learn more about the lysosomes, including identifying ideal conditions and the genes that cause the process.

“Almost everything starts from animal model research and we’re already seeing huge benefits to animal health in our simple model organisms,” Johnson said. “So I think there’s huge potential for it to transform and reach a clinical setting to impact human health. That’s obviously pretty far away from now, when we know more about what the impact would be globally with these structures.”