Comparing Gene Expression Profiles of Mammalian Species in Order to Search for the Determinants of Longevity
The comparative biology of aging and longevity, comparing the biochemistry of similar species with different life spans, is a good way to improve understanding of which aspects of our biology are important determinants of degeneration and age-related disease. In the open access paper linked here, researchers undertake an examination of gene expression profiles in cell cultures for a range of mammalian species, for example. Despite the usefulness, as an investigative method this will, I expect, be overtaken by prototype rejuvenation therapies based on damage repair in the years ahead. Aging is an accumulation of cell and tissue damage, and the best way to determine the contribution of any one particular type of damage is to remove it. Researchers are beginning that process for cellular senescence, now that senescent cells can be selectively destroyed in an efficient manner, and other items from the SENS portfolio of rejuvenation biotechnologies will be added as they reach the stage of practical demonstration in animal studies.
The maximum lifespan of mammalian species differs by more than 100-fold, ranging from ~2 years in shrews to more than 200 years in bowhead whales. While it has long been observed that maximum lifespan tends to correlate positively with body mass and time to maturity, but negatively with growth rate, mass-specific metabolic rate, and number of offspring, the underlying molecular basis is only starting to be understood. One way to study the control of longevity is to identify the genes, pathways, and interventions capable of extending lifespan or delaying aging phenotypes in experimental animals. Studies using model organisms have uncovered several important conditions, such as knockout of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) receptor, inhibition of mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR), mutation in growth hormone (GH) receptor, ablation of anterior pituitary (e.g. Snell dwarf mice), augmentation of proteins of the sirtuin family, and restriction of dietary intake. While many of these genes and pathways have been verified in yeast, flies, worms, and mice, the comparisons largely involve treatment and control groups of the same species, and the extent to which they explain the longevity variations across different species is unclear. For example, do the long-lived species have metabolic profiles resembling calorie restriction? Do they suppress IGF-1 or growth hormone signaling compared with the shorter-lived species? More generally, how do the evolutionary strategies of longevity relate to the experimental strategies that extend lifespan in model organisms?
To address these questions, a popular approach has been to compare exceptionally long-lived species with closely related species of common lifespan and identify the features associated with exceptional longevity. Examples include the amino acid changes in Uncoupling Protein 1 (UCP1) and production of high-molecular-mass hyaluronan in the naked mole rat; unique sequence changes in IGF1 and GH receptors in Brandt's bat; gene gain and loss associated with DNA repair, cell-cycle regulation, and cancer, as well as alteration in insulin signaling in the bowhead whale; and duplication of the p53 gene in elephants. Again, it is important to ascertain whether these mechanisms are unique characteristics of specific exceptionally long-lived species, or whether they can also help account for the general lifespan variation.
An extension of this approach has been cross-species analyses in a larger scale. For example, several biochemical studies across multiple mammalian and bird species identified some features correlating with species lifespan. Longevity of fibroblasts and erythrocytes in vitro, poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase activity, and rate of DNA repair were found to be positively correlated with longevity, whereas mitochondrial membrane and liver fatty acid peroxidizability index, rate of telomere shortening, and oxidative damage to DNA and mitochondrial DNA showed negative correlation. The advent of high throughput RNA sequencing (RNAseq) and mass spectrometry technologies has enabled the quantification of whole transcriptomes, metabolomes, and ionomes, across multiple species and organs. These studies revealed the complex transcriptomic and metabolic landscape across different organs and species, as well as some overlaps with the changes observed in the long-lived mutants created in laboratory.
While molecular profiling of mammals at the level of tissues may better represent the underlying biology, profiling in cell culture represents more defined experimental conditions and allows further manipulation to alter the identified molecular phenotypes. In this study, we examined the transcriptomes and metabolomes of primary skin fibroblasts across 16 species of mammals, to identify the molecular patterns associated with species longevity. We report that the genes involved in DNA repair and glucose metabolism were up-regulated in the longer-lived species, whereas proteolysis and protein translocation activities were suppressed. The longer-lived species also had lower levels of lysophosphatidylcholine and lysophosphatidylethanolamine and higher levels of amino acids; and the latter finding was validated in an independent dataset of bird and primate fibroblasts.