Northwestern University Study Shares News Insights into Aging Guided by Transcriptome, Gene Length Imbalance

Sep 13, 2023 | Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Resources, Laboratory Testing, Molecular Diagnostics, Genetic Testing, Whole Gene Sequencing

Findings could lead to deeper understanding of why we age, and to medical laboratory tests and treatments to slow or even reverse aging

Can humans control aging by keeping their genes long and balanced? Researchers at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, believe it may be possible. They have unveiled a “previously unknown mechanism” behind aging that could lead to medical interventions to slow or even reverse aging, according to a Northwestern news release.

Should additional studies validate these early findings, this line of testing may become a new service clinical laboratories could offer to referring physicians and patients. It would expand the test menu with assays that deliver value in diagnosing the aging state of a patient, and which identify the parts of the transcriptome that are undergoing the most alterations that reduce lifespan.

It may also provide insights into how treatments and therapies could be implemented by physicians to address aging.

The Northwestern University scientists published their findings in the journal Nature Aging title, “Aging Is Associated with a Systemic Length-Associated Transcriptome Imbalance.”

“I find it very elegant that a single, relatively concise principle seems to account for nearly all of the changes in activity of genes that happen in animals as they change,” Thomas Stoeger, PhD, postdoctoral scholar in the Amaral Lab who led the study, told GEN. Clinical laboratories involved in omics research may soon have new anti-aging diagnostic tests to perform. (Photo copyright: Amaral Lab.)

Possible ‘New Instrument’ for Biological Testing

Researchers found clues to aging in the length of genes. A gene transcript length reveals “molecular-level changes” during aging: longer genes relate to longer lifespans and shorter genes suggest shorter lives, GEN summarized.

The phenomenon the researchers uncovered—which they dubbed transcriptome imbalance—was “near universal” in the tissues they analyzed (blood, muscle, bone, and organs) from both humans and animals, Northwestern said. 

According to the National Human Genome Research Institute fact sheet, a transcriptome is “a collection of all the gene readouts (aka, transcript) present in a cell” shedding light on gene activity or expression.

The Northwestern study suggests “systems-level” changes are responsible for aging—a different view than traditional biology’s approach to analyzing the effects of single genes.

“We have been primarily focusing on a small number of genes, thinking that a few genes would explain disease,” said Luis Amaral, PhD, Senior Author of the Study and Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern, in the news release.

“So, maybe we were not focused on the right thing before. Now that we have this new understanding, it’s like having a new instrument. It’s like Galileo with a telescope, looking at space. Looking at gene activity through this new lens will enable us to see biological phenomena differently,” Amaral added.

In their Nature Aging paper, Amaral and his colleagues wrote, “We hypothesize that aging is associated with a phenomenon that affects the transcriptome in a subtle but global manner that goes unnoticed when focusing on the changes in expression of individual genes.

“We show that transcript length alone explains most transcriptional changes observed with aging in mice and humans,” they continued.

Researchers Turn to AI, RNA Sequencing

According to their published study, the Northwestern University scientists used large datasets, artificial intelligence (AI), and RNA (ribonucleic acid) sequencing in their analysis of tissue derived from:

  • Humans (men and women), age 30 to 49, 50 to 69, and 70 years and older. 
  • Mice, age four months to 24 months.
  • Rats, age six to 24 months.
  • Killifish, age five weeks to 39 weeks.

Scientific American reported the following study findings:

  • In tissues studied, older animals’ long transcripts were not as “abundant” as short transcripts, creating “imbalance.”
  • “Imbalance” likely prohibited the researchers’ discovery of a “specific set of genes” changing.
  • As animals aged, shorter genes “appeared to become more active” than longer genes.
  • In humans, the top 5% of genes with the shortest transcripts “included many linked to shorter life spans such as those involved in maintaining the length of telomeres.”
  • Conversely, the researchers’ review of the leading 5% of genes in humans with the longest transcripts found an association with long lives.
  • Antiaging drugs—rapamycin (aka, sirolimus) and resveratrol—were linked to an increase in long-gene transcripts.

“The changes in the activity of genes are very, very small, and these small changes involve thousands of genes. We found this change was consistent across different tissues and in different animals. We found it almost everywhere,” Thomas Stoeger, PhD, postdoctoral scholar in the Amaral Lab who led the study, told GEN.

In their paper, the Northwestern scientists noted implications for creation of healthcare interventions.

“We believe that understanding the direction of causality between other age-dependent cellular and transcriptomic changes and length-associated transcriptome imbalance could open novel research directions for antiaging interventions,” they wrote.

Other ‘Omics’ Studies

Dark Daily has previously reported on transcriptomics studies, along with research into the other “omics,” including metabolomics, proteomics, and genomics.

In “Spatial Transcriptomics Provide a New and Innovative Way to Analyze Tissue Biology, May Have Value in Surgical Pathology,” we explored how newly combined digital pathology, artificial intelligence (AI), and omics technologies are providing anatomic pathologists and medical laboratory scientists with powerful diagnostic tools.

In “Swiss Researchers Develop a Multi-omic Tumor Profiler to Inform Clinical Decision Support and Guide Precision Medicine Therapy for Cancer Patients,” we looked at how new biomarkers for cancer therapies derived from the research could usher in superior clinical laboratory diagnostics that identify a patient’s suitability for personalized drug therapies and treatments.

And in “Human Salivary Proteome Wiki Developed at University of Buffalo May Provide Biomarkers for New Diagnostic Tools and Medical Laboratory Tests,” we covered how proteins in human saliva make up its proteome and may be the key to new, precision medicine diagnostics that would give clinical pathologists new capabilities to identify disease.

Fountain of Youth

While more research is needed to validate its findings, the Northwestern study is compelling as it addresses a new area of transcriptome knowledge. This is another example of researchers cracking open human and animal genomes and gaining new insights into the processes supporting life.

For clinical laboratories and pathologists, diagnostic testing to reverse aging and guide the effectiveness of therapies may one day be possible—kind of like science’s take on the mythical Fountain of Youth.  

—Donna Marie Pocius

Related Information:

Aging Is Driven by Unbalanced Genes

Aging Linked to Gene Length Imbalance and Shift Towards Shorter Genes

NIH: Transcriptome Fact Sheet

Aging Is Associated with a Systemic Length-Associated Transcriptome Imbalance

Aging Is Linked to More Activity in Short Genes than in Long Genes

Spatial Transcriptomics Provide a New and Innovative Way to Analyze Tissue Biology, May Have Value in Surgical Pathology

Swiss Researchers Develop a Multi-omic Tumor Profiler to Inform Clinical Decision Support and Guide Precision Medicine Therapy for Cancer Patients

Human Salivary Proteome Wiki Developed at University of Buffalo May Provide Biomarkers for New Diagnostic Tools and Medical Laboratory Tests

Might Proteomics Challenge the Cult of DNA-centricity? Some Clinical Laboratory Diagnostic Developers See Opportunity in Protein-Centered Diagnostics

Jul 20, 2018 | Digital Pathology, Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing

Should greater attention be given to protein damage in chronic diseases such as Alzheimer’s and diabetes? One life scientist says “yes” and suggests changing how test developers view the cause of age-related and degenerative diseases

DNA and the human genome get plenty of media attention and are considered by many to be unlocking the secrets to health and long life. However, as clinical laboratory professionals know, DNA is just one component of the very complex organism that is a human being.

In fact, DNA, RNA, and proteins are all valid biomarkers for medical laboratory tests and, according to one life scientist, all three should get equal attention as to their role in curing disease and keeping people healthy.

Along with proteins and RNA, DNA is actually an “equal partner in the circle of life,” wrote David Grainger, PhD, CEO of Methuselah Health, in a Forbes opinion piece about what he calls the “cult of DNA-centricity” and its relative limitations.

Effects of Protein Damage

“Aging and age-related degenerative diseases are caused by protein damage rather than by DNA damage,” explained Grainger, a Life Scientist who studies the role proteins play in aging and disease. “DNA, like data, cannot by itself do anything. The data on your computer is powerless without apps to interpret it, screens and speakers to communicate it, keyboards and touchscreens to interact with it.”

“Similarly,” he continued, “the DNA sequence information (although it resides in a physical object—the DNA molecule—just as computer data resides on a hard disk) is powerless and ethereal until it is translated into proteins that can perform functions,” he points out.

According to Grainger, diseases such as cystic fibrosis and Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy may be associated with genetic mutation. However, other diseases take a different course and are more likely to develop due to protein damage, which he contends may strengthen in time, causing changes in cells or tissues and, eventually, age-related diseases.

“Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, or autoimmunity often take decades to develop (even though your genome sequence has been the same since the day you were conceived); the insidious accumulation of the damaged protein may be very slow indeed,” he penned.

“But so strong is the cult of DNA-centricity that most scientists seem unwilling to challenge the fundamental assumption that the cause of late-onset diseases must lie somewhere in the genome,” Grainger concludes.

Shifting Focus from Genetics to Proteins

Besides being CEO of Methuselah Health, Grainger also is Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Advisor at Medicxi, a life sciences investment firm that backed Methuselah Health with $5 million in venture capital funding for research into disease treatments that focus on proteins in aging, reported Fierce CEO.

Methuselah Health, founded in 2015 in Cambridge, UK, with offices in the US, is reportedly using post-translational modifications for analysis of many different proteins.

“At Methuselah Health, we have shifted focus from the genetics—which tells you in an ideal world how your body would function—to the now: this is how your body functions now and this is what is going wrong with it. And that answer lies in the proteins,” stated Dr. David Grainger (above), CEO of Methuselah Health, in an interview with the UK’s New NHS Alliance. Click on this link to watch the full interview. [Photo and caption copyright: New NHS Alliance.]

How Does it Work?

This is how Methuselah Health analyzes damaged proteins using mass spectrometry, according to David Mosedale, PhD, Methuselah Health’s Chief Technology Officer, in the New NHS Alliance story:

  • Protein samples from healthy individuals and people with diseases are used;
  • Proteins from the samples are sliced into protein blocks and fed slowly into a mass spectrometer, which accurately weighs them;
  • Scientists observe damage to individual blocks of proteins;
  • Taking those blocks, proteins are reconstructed to ascertain which proteins have been damaged;
  • Information is leveraged for discovery of drugs to target diseases.

Mass spectrometry is a powerful approach to protein sample identification, according to News-Medical.Net. It enables analysis of protein specificity and background contaminants. Interactions among proteins—with RNA or DNA—also are possible with mass spectrometry.

Methuselah Health’s scientists are particularly interested in the damaged proteins that have been around a while, which they call hyper-stable danger variants (HSDVs) and consider to be the foundation for development of age-related diseases, Grainger told WuXi AppTec.

“By applying the Methuselah platform, we can see the HSDVs and so understand which pathways we need to target to prevent disease,” he explained.

For clinical laboratories, pathologists, and their patients, work by Methuselah Health could accelerate the development of personalized medicine treatments for debilitating chronic diseases. Furthermore, it may compel more people to think of DNA as one of several components interacting that make up human bodies and not as the only game in diagnostics.

—Donna Marie Pocius

Related Information:

The Cult of DNA-Centricity

Methuselah Health CEO David Grainger Out to Aid Longevity

VIDEO: Methuselah Health, Addressing Diseases Associated with Aging

Understanding and Slowing the Human Aging Clock Via Protein Stability

Using Mass Spectrometry for Protein Complex Analysis

 

 

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