Abstract
Background: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small, non-coding RNAs that regulate gene expression and play a critical role in development, homeostasis, and disease. Despite their demonstrated roles in age-associated pathologies, little is known about the role of miRNAs in human aging and longevity.Results: We employed massively parallel sequencing technology to identify miRNAs expressed in B-cells from Ashkenazi Jewish centenarians, i.e., those living to a hundred and a human model of exceptional longevity, and younger controls without a family history of longevity. With data from 26.7 million reads comprising 9.4 × 108 bp from 3 centenarian and 3 control individuals, we discovered a total of 276 known miRNAs and 8 unknown miRNAs ranging several orders of magnitude in expression levels, a typical characteristics of saturated miRNA-sequencing. A total of 22 miRNAs were found to be significantly upregulated, with only 2 miRNAs downregulated, in centenarians as compared to controls. Gene Ontology analysis of the predicted and validated targets of the 24 differentially expressed miRNAs indicated enrichment of functional pathways involved in cell metabolism, cell cycle, cell signaling, and cell differentiation. A cross sectional expression analysis of the differentially expressed miRNAs in B-cells from Ashkenazi Jewish individuals between the 50th and 100th years of age indicated that expression levels of miR-363* declined significantly with age. Centenarians, however, maintained the youthful expression level. This result suggests that miR-363* may be a candidate longevity-associated miRNA.Conclusion: Our comprehensive miRNA data provide a resource for further studies to identify genetic pathways associated with aging and longevity in humans.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 353 |
Journal | BMC Genomics |
Volume | 13 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 31 Jul 2012 |
Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work has been supported by grants to Dr. Y. Suh from the Glenn Award for Research in Biological Mechanisms of Aging, from the US National Institute of Health (RO1 AG024391, PO1 AG027734, and PO1 AG17242), and from a pilot grant from the Einstein Cancer Center.
Keywords
- Aging
- Centenarians
- Life span
- Massively parallel sequencing
- MicroRNA
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Biotechnology
- Genetics