Mouse Aging Cell Atlas Analysis Reveals Global and Cell Type Specific Aging Signatures

Aging is associated with complex molecular and cellular processes that are poorly understood. Here we leveraged the Tabula Muris Senis single-cell RNA-seq dataset to systematically characterize gene expression changes during aging across diverse cell types in the mouse. We identified aging-dependent genes in 76 tissue-cell types from 23 tissues and characterized both shared and tissue-cell-specific aging behaviors. We found that the aging-related genes shared by multiple tissue-cell types also change their expression congruently in the same direction during aging in most tissue-cell types, suggesting a coordinated global aging behavior at the organismal level. Scoring cells based on these shared aging genes allowed us to contrast the aging status of different tissues and cell types from a transcriptomic perspective. In addition, we identified genes that exhibit age-related expression changes specific to each functional category of tissue-cell types. All together, our analyses provide one of the most comprehensive and systematic characterizations of the molecular signatures of aging across diverse tissue-cell types in a mammalian system.