Project description:<p>The Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) is a long-term study of a random sample of men and women, who graduated from Wisconsin high schools in 1957, and their siblings. The WLS panel started out with a panel of 10,317 members from the class of 1957. Over time a second panel of 8,734 randomly selected siblings of the original graduate panel were recruited for the study. Of these combined panel members, 9,027 survived and contributed saliva for genetic analysis. Survey data were collected from the original respondents or their parents in 1957, 1964, 1975, 1992, 2004, and 2011, and from a selected sibling in 1977, 1994, 2005, and 2011. WLS data provide a detailed record of educational, social, psychological, economic, mental and physical health characteristics of a relatively homogeneous population that is almost entirely of Northern and Western European ancestry. Saliva was first collected in 2007-2008 by mail. Additional samples were collected in the course of home interviews that began in March 2010. </p>
Project description:The methylation data were measured from longitudinal blood samples to study the longitudinal change of methylation in association with age.
Project description:The study consists of three parts: 1) normal aging in liver and skin (cross-sectional); 2) treatment with rotenone in brain, liver and skin; 3) longitudinal study of 45 fish with different ages at their death measured at two different time points by fin clipping Jena Centre for Systems Biology of Ageing - JenAge (www.jenage.de)
Project description:Aging of biological systems is controlled by various processes which have a potential impact on gene expression. Here we report a genome-wide transcriptome analysis of the fungal aging model Podospora anserina. Total RNA of three individuals of defined age were pooled and analyzed by SuperSAGE (serial analysis of gene expression). A bioinformatics analysis identified different molecular pathways to be affected during aging. While the abundance of transcripts linked to ribosomes and to the proteasome quality control system were found to decrease during aging, those associated with autophagy increase, suggesting that autophagy may act as a compensatory quality control pathway. Transcript profiles associated with the energy metabolism including mitochondrial functions were identified to fluctuate during aging. Comparison of wild-type transcripts, which are continuously down-regulated during aging, with those down-regulated in the long-lived, copper-uptake mutant grisea, validated the relevance of age-related changes in cellular copper metabolism. Overall, we (i) present a unique age-related data set of a longitudinal study of the experimental aging model P. anserina which represents a reference resource for future investigations in a variety of organisms, (ii) suggest autophagy to be a key quality control pathway that becomes active once other pathways fail, and (iii) present testable predictions for subsequent experimental investigations.