RNAAgeCalc: A multi-tissue transcriptional age calculator

Abstract

We introduced RNAAgeCalc, a versatile across-tissue and tissue-specific transcriptional age calculator. We utilized GTEx database to identify 1,616 common age-related genes based on meta-analysis of transcriptional age signature across multi-tissues. Additionally, tissue-specific age-related genes were obtained from differential expression analysis on individual tissues. By performing across-tissue transcriptional age prediction, we showed that our 1,616 common age-related genes outperformed other prior age related gene signatures. Furthermore, we utilized TCGA database to demonstrate that the transcriptional age acceleration computed from our within-tissue predictor was significantly correlated with mutation burden, mortality risk and cancer stage. RNAAgeCalc is available at http://www.ams.sunysb.edu/~pfkuan/softwares.html#RNAAgeCalc.