Human Brain Cell-Type-Specific Aging Clocks Based on Single-Nuclei Transcriptomics
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PROVIDER: PRJNA1234305 | ENA |
REPOSITORIES: ENA
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Project description:Aging is the primary risk factor for most neurodegenerative diseases, yet the cell-type-specific progression of brain aging remains poorly understood. Here, human cell-type-specific transcriptomic aging clocks are developed using high-quality single-nucleus RNA sequencing data from post mortem human prefrontal cortex tissue of 31 donors aged 18–94 years, encompassing 73,941 high-quality nuclei. Distinct transcriptomic changes are observed across major cell types, including upregulation of inflammatory response genes in microglia from older samples. Aging clocks trained on each major cell type accurately predict chronological age, capture biologically relevant pathways, and remain robust in independent single-nucleus RNA-sequencing datasets, underscoring their broad applicability. Notably, cell-type-specific age acceleration is identified in individuals with Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia, suggesting altered aging trajectories in these conditions. These findings demonstrate the feasibility of cell-type-specific transcriptomic clocks to measure biological aging in the human brain and highlight potential mechanisms of selective vulnerability in neurodegenerative diseases.
2025-08-29 | GSE291605 | GEO
Project description:Cross-Tissue Comparison of Epigenetic Aging Clocks in Humans
| PRJNA1178652 | ENA
Project description:The establishment of highly accurate aging clocks based on DNA methylation highlighted the strong link between epigenetic alterations and aging. However, connecting methylation clocks to physiological changes is not straightforward. Transcriptomics and proteomics clocks on the other hand are directly connected to cellular function, yet they do not allow us to understand underlying epigenetic mechanisms. We hypothesize that chromatin accessibility, a readout that integrates many epigenetic mechanisms, may bridge epigenetic changes with their downstream effects in aging. To demonstrate that chromatin accessibility can predict age, we generated chromatin accessibility profiles from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of 157 human donors, aged 20 to 74 and used them to construct a novel aging clock. Our clock predicted age with a root mean squared error of 7.69 years, a median absolute error of 5.69 years and a correlation of 0.83. Moreover, by comparing our chromatin accessibility data to matched transcriptomic profiles, we show that the genomic sites selected by our clock drive changes in transcription during aging. This chromatin accessibility clock could therefore be used to better understand the mechanisms driving the process of aging and evaluate anti-aging interventions.
2022-12-01 | GSE193141 | GEO
Project description:The establishment of highly accurate aging clocks based on DNA methylation highlighted the strong link between epigenetic alterations and aging. However, connecting methylation clocks to physiological changes is not straightforward. Transcriptomics and proteomics clocks on the other hand are directly connected to cellular function, yet they do not allow us to understand underlying epigenetic mechanisms. We hypothesize that chromatin accessibility, a readout that integrates many epigenetic mechanisms, may bridge epigenetic changes with their downstream effects in aging. To demonstrate that chromatin accessibility can predict age, we generated chromatin accessibility profiles from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of 157 human donors, aged 20 to 74 and used them to construct a novel aging clock. Our clock predicted age with a root mean squared error of 7.69 years, a median absolute error of 5.69 years and a correlation of 0.83. Moreover, by comparing our chromatin accessibility data to matched transcriptomic profiles, we show that the genomic sites selected by our clock drive changes in transcription during aging. This chromatin accessibility clock could therefore be used to better understand the mechanisms driving the process of aging and evaluate anti-aging interventions.
2022-12-01 | GSE193140 | GEO
Project description:Epigenetic clocks are a common group of tools used to measure biological aging – the progressive deterioration of cells, tissues and organs. Epigenetic clocks have been trained almost exclusively using blood-based tissues but there is growing interest in estimating epigenetic age using less-invasive oral-based tissues (i.e., buccal or saliva) in both research and commercial settings. However, differentiated cell types across body tissues exhibit unique DNA methylation landscapes and age-related alterations to the DNA methylome. Applying epigenetic clocks derived from blood-based tissues to estimate epigenetic age of oral-based tissues may introduce biases. We tested the within-person comparability of common epigenetic clocks across four tissue types: buccal epithelial, saliva, dry blood spots, and peripheral blood mononuclear cells. We tested 163 distinct tissue samples from 47 individuals aged 19-70 years. Overall, there were significant within-person differences in epigenetic clock estimates from oral-based versus blood-based tissues, with average differences of almost 30 years observed in some age clocks. In addition, most epigenetic clock estimates of blood-based tissues exhibited low correlation with estimates from oral-based tissues despite controlling for cellular proportions and other technical factors. Notably, the Skin and Blood clock exhibited the lowest age acceleration values of any clock across all tissue types, indicating its unique ability to accurately estimate chronological age in both oral- and blood-based tissues. Our findings indicate that application of blood-derived epigenetic clocks in oral-based tissues may not yield comparable estimates of epigenetic age, highlighting the need for careful consideration of tissue type when estimating epigenetic age. NOTE: The full study included children and adult samples, however, the current data only includes the adult samples (sample sizes and age range have been adjusted to reflect the adult data only).
2025-02-07 | GSE280465 | GEO
Project description:These data were used in the spatial transcriptomics analysis of the article titled \\"Single-Cell and Spatial Transcriptomics Analysis of Human Adrenal Aging\\".
2024-04-22 | E-MTAB-13991 | biostudies-arrayexpress
Project description:Aging drives a progressive decline in cognition that may be delayed by exercise (Ex). Whether and how Ex induces changes in molecular and spatial signatures of aging across the brain remains little known. Herein, we assessed the effects of Ex against cognitive aging, and characterized the molecular and spatial changes by aging and upon Ex across the brain at the single-nuclei resolution. Overall, Ex demonstrated cognitive benefits in old mice and largely protected the brain cells against aging, especially the neurons. Ex regulated the inhibitory neuron-specific aging-associated genes Alcam, Cacna2d3, and Foxp2, and reorganized the spatial distribution of cells across the aging brain, which may collectively contribute to the rejuvenation of cognitive function in aged mice. This study provides invaluable insights into Ex-induced benefits against brain aging.
2025-05-01 | GSE271563 | GEO
Project description:Aging drives a progressive decline in cognition that may be delayed by exercise (Ex). Whether and how Ex induces changes in molecular and spatial signatures of aging across the brain remains little known. Herein, we assessed the effects of Ex against cognitive aging, and characterized the molecular and spatial changes by aging and upon Ex across the brain at the single-nuclei resolution. Overall, Ex demonstrated cognitive benefits in old mice and largely protected the brain cells against aging, especially the neurons. Ex regulated the inhibitory neuron-specific aging-associated genes Alcam, Cacna2d3, and Foxp2, and reorganized the spatial distribution of cells across the aging brain, which may collectively contribute to the rejuvenation of cognitive function in aged mice. This study provides invaluable insights into Ex-induced benefits against brain aging.
2025-05-03 | GSE271564 | GEO
Project description:The notion that germline does not age goes back to the 19th century ideas of August Weismann. However, being in a metabolically active state, germline accumulates damage and other age-related changes over time, i.e., they age. For new life to begin in the same young state, they must be rejuvenated in the offspring. Here, we developed a new multi-tissue epigenetic clock and applied it, together with other aging clocks, to track changes in biological age during mouse and human prenatal development. This analysis revealed a significant decrease in biological age, i.e. rejuvenation, during early stages of embryogenesis, followed by an increase in later stages. We further found that pluripotent stem cells do not age even after extensive passaging and that the examined epigenetic age dynamics is conserved across species. Overall, this study uncovers a natural rejuvenation event during embryogenesis and suggests that the minimal biological age (the ground zero) marks the beginning of organismal aging.
2021-05-10 | GSE171332 | GEO
Project description:Organisms have adapted to the changing environmental conditions within the 24h cycle of the day by temporally segregating tissue physiology to the optimal time of the day. On the cellular level temporal segregation of physiological processes is established by the circadian clock, a Bmal1 dependent transcriptional oscillator network. The circadian clocks within individual cells of a tissue are synchronised by environmental signals, mainly light, in order to reach temporally segregated physiology on the tissue level. However, how light mediated synchronisation of peripheral tissue clocks is achieved mechanistically and whether circadian clocks in different organs are autonomous or interact with each other to achieve rhythmicity is unknown. Here we report that light can synchronise core circadian clocks in two peripheral tissues, the epidermis and liver hepatocytes, even in the complete absence of functional clocks in any other tissue within the whole organism. On the other hand, tissue extrinsic circadian clock rhythmicity is necessary to retain rhythmicity of the epidermal clock in the absence of light, proving for the first time that the circadian clockwork acts as a memory of time for the synchronisation of peripheral clocks in the absence of external entrainment signals. Furthermore, we find that tissue intrinsic Bmal1 is an important regulator of the epidermal differentiation process whose deregulation leads to a premature aging like phenotype of the epidermis. Thus, our results establish a new model for the segregation of peripheral tissue physiology whereby the synchronisation of peripheral clocks is acquired by the interaction of a light dependent but circadian clock independent pathway with circadian clockwork dependent cues.
2019-03-25 | GSE115104 | GEO