Ucar Duygu, Márquez Eladio J, Chung Cheng-Han, Marches Radu, Rossi Robert J, Uyar Asli, Wu Te-Chia, George Joshy, Stitzel Michael L, Palucka A Karolina, Kuchel George A, Banchereau Jacques
The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine, Farmington, CT
Institute for Systems Genomics, University of Connecticut, Farmington, CT.
J Exp Med. 2017 Oct 2;214(10):3123-3144. doi: 10.1084/jem.20170416. Epub 2017 Sep 13.
Aging is linked to deficiencies in immune responses and increased systemic inflammation. To unravel the regulatory programs behind these changes, we applied systems immunology approaches and profiled chromatin accessibility and the transcriptome in PBMCs and purified monocytes, B cells, and T cells. Analysis of samples from 77 young and elderly donors revealed a novel and robust aging signature in PBMCs, with simultaneous systematic chromatin closing at promoters and enhancers associated with T cell signaling and a potentially stochastic chromatin opening mostly found at quiescent and repressed sites. Combined analyses of chromatin accessibility and the transcriptome uncovered immune molecules activated/inactivated with aging and identified the silencing of the gene and the IL-7 signaling pathway genes as potential biomarkers. This signature is borne by memory CD8 T cells, which exhibited an aging-related loss in binding of NF-κB and STAT factors. Thus, our study provides a unique and comprehensive approach to identifying candidate biomarkers and provides mechanistic insights into aging-associated immunodeficiency.
衰老与免疫反应缺陷及全身炎症增加有关。为了揭示这些变化背后的调控程序,我们应用了系统免疫学方法,并对外周血单核细胞(PBMC)以及纯化的单核细胞、B细胞和T细胞中的染色质可及性和转录组进行了分析。对77名年轻和老年捐赠者的样本分析揭示了PBMC中一种新的、强大的衰老特征,同时与T细胞信号传导相关的启动子和增强子处的染色质系统性关闭,以及主要在静止和抑制位点发现的潜在随机染色质开放。对染色质可及性和转录组的联合分析揭示了随衰老激活/失活的免疫分子,并确定该基因和IL-7信号通路基因的沉默为潜在生物标志物。这种特征由记忆CD8 T细胞呈现,其在NF-κB和STAT因子结合方面表现出与衰老相关的损失。因此,我们的研究提供了一种独特而全面的方法来识别候选生物标志物,并为衰老相关免疫缺陷提供了机制性见解。