From Medical News Today, a look back at two years of amazing progress in Progeria research: "researchers made a breakthrough in 2003, tracing [Progeria] to a spontaneous mutation in a gene encoding an important structural component of the cell nucleus, the organelle in which our DNA is stored, read out, and copied. ... The second set of results reveals mutant [lamin A] proteins turning up in the wrong place - too tightly linked to the membranes of the nuclear envelope - to be of much help during key stages of the cell cycle. The researchers believe that this localization failure of mutated [lamin A] proteins would severely compromise the ability of [Progeria] cells to engage in normal DNA replication, a probable factor in their rapid march to premature senescence. Whether similar missteps and miscues by nuclear lamins are part of 'normal' human aging is the question that draws researchers onward."

Link: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=34919