eLife (Apr 2021)

Mouse aging cell atlas analysis reveals global and cell type-specific aging signatures

  • Martin Jinye Zhang,
  • Angela Oliveira Pisco,
  • Spyros Darmanis,
  • James Zou

DOI
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.62293
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10

Abstract

Read online

Aging is associated with complex molecular and cellular processes that are poorly understood. Here we leveraged the Tabula Muris Senis single-cell RNA-seq data set to systematically characterize gene expression changes during aging across diverse cell types in the mouse. We identified aging-dependent genes in 76 tissue-cell types from 23 tissues and characterized both shared and tissue-cell-specific aging behaviors. We found that the aging-related genes shared by multiple tissue-cell types also change their expression congruently in the same direction during aging in most tissue-cell types, suggesting a coordinated global aging behavior at the organismal level. Scoring cells based on these shared aging genes allowed us to contrast the aging status of different tissues and cell types from a transcriptomic perspective. In addition, we identified genes that exhibit age-related expression changes specific to each functional category of tissue-cell types. Altogether, our analyses provide one of the most comprehensive and systematic characterizations of the molecular signatures of aging across diverse tissue-cell types in a mammalian system.

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