Fight Aging!

Transcription is the first step in gene expression, the production of RNA from sequences in the genome. Transcriptional noise describes an age-related increase in the raggedness of transcription, differences in amounts of proteins produced as individual cells become affected by the damage of aging to different degrees, and in different ways. Does this in fact happen as presently thought, however? It is certainly the case that epigenetic changes occur with age, and protein levels also alter with age. How much of this is noise versus other reactions to a changing tissue environment, such as alterations in the balance of different cell types? There is room for debate, it seems.

Aging is often associated with a loss of cell type identity that results in an increase in transcriptional noise in aged tissues. If this phenomenon reflects a fundamental property of aging remains an open question. Transcriptional changes at the cellular level are best detected by single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNAseq). However, the diverse computational methods used for the quantification of age-related loss of cellular identity have prevented reaching meaningful conclusions by direct comparison of existing scRNAseq datasets.

To address these issues we created Decibel, a Python toolkit that implements side-to-side four commonly used methods for the quantification of age-related transcriptional noise in scRNAseq data. Additionally, we developed Scallop, a novel computational method for the quantification of membership of single cells to their assigned cell type cluster. Cells with a greater Scallop membership score are transcriptionally more stable. Application of these computational tools to seven aging datasets showed large variability between tissues and datasets, suggesting that increased transcriptional noise is not a universal hallmark of aging.

To understand the source of apparent loss of cell type identity associated with aging, we analyzed cell type-specific changes in transcriptional noise and the changes in cell type composition of the mammalian lung. No robust pattern of cell type-specific transcriptional noise alteration was found across aging lung datasets. In contrast, age-associated changes in cell type composition of the lung were consistently found, particularly of immune cells. These results suggest that claims of increased transcriptional noise of aged tissues should be reformulated.

Link: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.80380