Inter-tissue convergence of gene expression during ageing suggests age-related loss of tissue and cellular identity.

ABSTRACT: Developmental trajectories of gene expression may reverse in their direction during ageing, a phenomenon previously linked to cellular identity loss. Our analysis of cerebral cortex, lung, liver, and muscle transcriptomes of 16 mice, covering development and ageing intervals, revealed widespread but tissue-specific ageing-associated expression reversals. Cumulatively, these reversals create a unique phenomenon: mammalian tissue transcriptomes diverge from each other during postnatal development, but during ageing, they tend to converge towards similar expression levels, a process we term Divergence followed by Convergence (DiCo). We found that DiCo was most prevalent among tissue-specific genes and associated with loss of tissue identity, which is confirmed using data from in

SUBMITTER: Izgi H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8880995 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature