What have we learned on aging from omics studies?

Aging is a complex process. Transcriptomic studies of the last decade have identified genes and pathways that are regulated during aging in multiple species and organs. Yet, since a manifold of pathways are regulated and the amplitude of regulation is often small, reproducibility across studies is moderate and disentangling cause-consequence relationships has proven challenging. Here, we review a number of consistent findings in the light of more recent, longitudinal studies and of studies combining transcriptomics and proteomics that identified deregulation of protein biosynthetic pathways as an early event and likely driver of aging.