RRC ID 65374
Author Meyer DH, Schumacher B.
Title BiT age: A transcriptome-based aging clock near the theoretical limit of accuracy.
Journal Aging Cell
Abstract Aging clocks dissociate biological from chronological age. The estimation of biological age is important for identifying gerontogenes and assessing environmental, nutritional, or therapeutic impacts on the aging process. Recently, methylation markers were shown to allow estimation of biological age based on age-dependent somatic epigenetic alterations. However, DNA methylation is absent in some species such as Caenorhabditis elegans and it remains unclear whether and how the epigenetic clocks affect gene expression. Aging clocks based on transcriptomes have suffered from considerable variation in the data and relatively low accuracy. Here, we devised an approach that uses temporal scaling and binarization of C. elegans transcriptomes to define a gene set that predicts biological age with an accuracy that is close to the theoretical limit. Our model accurately predicts the longevity effects of diverse strains, treatments, and conditions. The involved genes support a role of specific transcription factors as well as innate immunity and neuronal signaling in the regulation of the aging process. We show that this binarized transcriptomic aging (BiT age) clock can also be applied to human age prediction with high accuracy. The BiT age clock could therefore find wide application in genetic, nutritional, environmental, and therapeutic interventions in the aging process.
Volume 20(3)
Pages e13320
Published 2021-3-1
DOI 10.1111/acel.13320
PMID 33656257
PMC PMC7963339
MeSH Aging / genetics* Biological Clocks / genetics* Fibroblasts / metabolism Humans Immunity, Innate / genetics Mutation / genetics Neurons / metabolism Signal Transduction Stress, Physiological / genetics Time Factors Transcriptome / genetics*
Resource
C.elegans tm1297 tm2149