Aging

Human skin is the largest organ and protective layer of the body. It protects the internal body organ from any kind of mechanical as well as physical injuries. It protects the body from invasion of bacteria, fungi, viruses, and regulates the body temperature. Skin also protects the body from excessive loss of water and synthesizes vitamin D. It aids the beauty of the body too. Many skin problems like acne, melasma, and wrinkles affect the appearance of skin and it may also lead to develop chronic skin diseases and if not controlled it may lead to cancer too. One of the most serious problem of skin is aging. 

The ability of elastic tissues to deform under physiological forces and to subsequently release stored energy to drive passive recoil is vital to the function of many dynamic tissues (Sherratt, 2009). Elastic fibres are highly insoluble structures, which are composed of elastin and fibrillin microfibrils (Kielty et al., 2002). Elastase is an enzyme from the class of proteases that breaks down the peptide bonds (proteins) which damages the elastin fibre promoting decreased skin elasticity. Elastin is a specialized protein with a molecular weight of 64-66 KDa, and an irregular or random coil conformation comprising 830 amino acids (Daamen et al., 2007). Dermal aging includes dermal thinning, as a result of reduced fibroblast number as well as impaired synthesis of extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins (Leyden, 1990; Baumann, 2007; Uitto, 1986; Mays et al., 1995). Thus, inhibition of the elastase activity in the dermis could be used as a method to maintain skin elasticity (Kim et al., 2010) preventing the skin from aging.