Biology of healthy aging: Biological hallmarks of stress resistance-related and unrelated to longevity in humans

Abstract

Stress resistance is tightly associated with longer and healthier lifespans in various model organisms, including nematodes, fruit flies, and mice. However, we lack a complete understanding of stress resistance in humans, and therefore, we investigated how stress resistance and longevity are interlinked in humans. Using more than 180 databases, we identified 541 human genes associated with stress resistance. The curated gene set is highly enriched with genes involved in cellular response to stress. The Reactome analysis identified 398 biological pathways, narrowed down to 172 pathways, using a medium threshold (p-value < 1 x 10-04). We further summarized into 14 pathway categories, e.g., cellular response to stimuli/stress, DNA repair, gene expression, and immune system. There were overlapping categories between stress resistance and longevity, including gene expression, signal transduction, immune system, and cellular responses to stimuli/stress. The categories include the PIP3-AKT-FOXO and mTOR pathways, known to specify lifespans in the model systems. They also include the accelerated aging syndrome genes (WRN and HGPS/LMNA), while the genes were also involved in non-overlapped categories. Notably, nuclear pore proteins are enriched among the stress resistance pathways and overlap with diverse metabolic pathways. This study suggests that stress resistance is closely linked with longevity pathways, but not entirely identical. While most longevity categories intersect with stress-resistance categories, some do not, particularly those related to cell proliferation and beta-cell development. We also note inconsistencies in pathway terminologies with aging hallmarks reported previously and propose them to be more unified and integral.