Lu, T.C., Brbić, M., Park, Y.J., Jackson, T., Chen, J., Kolluru, S.S., Qi, Y., Katheder, N.S., Cai, X.T., Lee, S., Chen, Y.C., Auld, N., Liang, C.Y., Ding, S.H., Welsch, D., D'Souza, S., Pisco, A.O., Jones, R.C., Leskovec, J., Lai, E.C., Bellen, H.J., Luo, L., Jasper, H., Quake, S.R., Li, H. (2023). Aging Fly Cell Atlas identifies exhaustive aging features at cellular resolution.  Science 380(6650): eadg0934.

FBrf0256843

Research paper

Aging is characterized by a decline in tissue function, but the underlying changes at cellular resolution across the organism remain unclear. Here, we present the Aging Fly Cell Atlas, a single-nucleus transcriptomic map of the whole aging Drosophila. We characterized 163 distinct cell types and performed an in-depth analysis of changes in tissue cell composition, gene expression, and cell identities. We further developed aging clock models to predict fly age and show that ribosomal gene expression is a conserved predictive factor for age. Combining all aging features, we find distinctive cell type-specific aging patterns. This atlas provides a valuable resource for studying fundamental principles of aging in complex organisms.

PMC10829769 (PMC) (EuropePMC)