Project description:Aging is a major risk factor for neurodegenerative diseases that impose tremendous burdens on people and societies today. To understand trajectories of neurological aging in a primate, we generated one of the most comprehensive brain transcriptional datasets to date in a unique population of naturalistic, behaviorally phenotyped rhesus macaques. We demonstrate that age-related changes in the level and variance of gene expression are associated with neural functions and neurological diseases, including Alzheimer's disease. Further, we demonstrate that higher social status in females is associated with younger relative transcriptional ages, providing a compelling link between the social environment and aging in the brain. Our findings lend insight into biological mechanisms underlying brain aging and indicate promising directions for improving social gradients in neurological health.
Project description:Aging is a major risk factor for neurodegenerative diseases that impose tremendous burdens on people and societies today. To understand trajectories of neurological aging in a primate, we generated one of the most comprehensive brain transcriptional datasets to date in a unique population of naturalistic, behaviorally phenotyped rhesus macaques. In this experiment, we generated 71,863 single-nucleus RNA-seq transcriptomes from the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of 24 adult females spanning all ages. We find that, of all tested cell classes, oligodendrocytes were the only cell type to significantly increase in proportion with age. We also identify hundreds of genes that change significantly with age in one or more cell types, providing a valuable window into cell-type-specific aging in the prefrontal cortex. Our findings lend insight into biological mechanisms underlying brain aging and indicate promising directions for improving neurological health.
Project description:As coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and aging are both accompanied by cognitive decline, we hypothesized that COVID-19 might lead to molecular signatures similar to aging. We performed whole-transcriptome analysis of the frontal cortex, a critical area for cognitive function, in individuals with COVID-19, age-matched and sex-matched uninfected controls, and uninfected individuals with intensive care unit/ventilator treatment. Our findings indicate that COVID-19 is associated with molecular signatures of brain aging and emphasize the value of neurological follow-up in recovered individuals.
Project description:Numerous multi-omic investigations of cancer tissue have documented varying and poor pairwise transcript:protein quantitative correlations and most deconvolution tools aiming to predict cell type proportions (cell admixture) have been developed and credentialed using transcript-level data alone. To estimate cell admixture using protein abundance data, we analyzed proteome (and transcriptome data) generated from contrived admixtures of tumor, stroma, and immune cell models or those selectively harvested from the tissue microenvironment by laser microdissection from high grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSOC) tumors. Co-quantified transcripts and proteins performed similarly to estimate stroma and immune cell admixture in two commonly used deconvolution algorithms ESTIMATE and ConsensusTME (r ≥ 0.63). Here we have developed and optimized protein-based signatures to estimate cell admixture proportions and benchmarked these using bulk tumor proteomics data from over 150 HGSOC patients. The optimized protein signatures supporting cell type proportion estimates from bulk tissue proteomic data are available at https://lmdomics.org/ProteoMixture/.
Project description:The retina is a light-sensitive highly-organized tissue, which is vulnerable to aging and age-related retinal diseases. However, the effects of aging on retinal cell types including those present in neural retina and retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), as well as cell types in choroid layer remain largely unknown. Here, we established the single-cell transcriptomic atlas of the retina and adjacent choroid in young and aged non-human primates (NHPs), identifying 15 cell types with distinct gene expression signatures and finding several novel markers. Our analysis reveals that oxidative stress is a major aging feature of the cells in the neural retinal layer, whereas an enhanced inflammatory response is that of RPE and choroidal cells. We also found that the RPE cell is the cell type most susceptible to aging in retina, as evidenced by the decreased cell density as well as the highest numbers of differentially expressed genes overlapping with genes underlying aging and aging-related retinal diseases, along with aberrant cell-cell interactions with its two adjacent layers. Altogether, our study provides the roadmap for understanding retinal aging in a NHP model at single-cell resolution, enabling the identification of new diagnostic biomarkers and potential therapeutic targets for age-related human retinal disorders.
Project description:Studies on aging have largely included one or two OMICS layers, which may not necessarily reflect the signatures of other layers. Moreover, most aging studies have often compared very young (4-5 wks) mice with old (24 months) mice which does not reflect the aging transition after the attainment of adulthood. Therefore, we aimed to study and compared muti-OMICS aging signatures across key metabolic tissues of mature adults (6 months) and old (24 months) C57BL/6J mice (the most commonly used mouse strain). Here we compared the differentially regulated genes and enriched pathways for transcriptome, proteome and epigenome (H3K27ac, H3K4me3, H3K27me3, DNA methylation) across liver, heart, and quadriceps muscle. The major aging associated pathways cross multiple layers and tissues are decreased RNA metabolism, transcription, and translation at transcript and protein levels however increased potential of transcription at DNA methylation and H3K27ac levels.