Aging increases cell-to-cell transcriptional variability upon immune stimulation

著者: Celia Pilar Martinez‐Jimenez, Nils Eling, Hung‐Chang Chen, Catalina A. Vallejos, Aleksandra A. Kolodziejczyk, Frances Connor, Lovorka Stojic, Tim F. Rayner, Michael J. T. Stubbington, Sarah A. Teichmann, Maike de la Roche, John C. Marioni, Duncan T. Odom - Science 2017 被引用: 372

T cells from young and old mice from two divergent species. In young animals, immunological activation drives a conserved transcriptomic switch, resulting in tightly controlled gene expression characterized by a strong up-regulation of a core activation program, coupled with a decrease in cell-to-cell variability. Aging perturbed the activation of this core program and increased expression heterogeneity across populations of cells in both species. These discoveries suggest that increased cell-to-cell transcriptional variability will be a hallmark feature of aging across most, if not all, mammalian tissues.