Research Paper|Volume 15, Issue 1|pp 6—20

Single-cell transcriptomics of peripheral blood in the aging mouse

Yee Voan Teo¹, Samuel J. Hinthorn², Ashley E. Webb^1,³, Nicola Neretti^1,^2,³

¹Department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry, Brown University, Providence, RI 02903, USA
²Center for Computational Molecular Biology, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA
³Center on the Biology of Aging, Brown University, Providence, RI 02903, USA

Received: October 3, 2022Accepted: December 29, 2022Published: January 6, 2023

https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.204471

Copyright: © 2023 Teo et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Compositional and transcriptional changes in the hematopoietic system have been used as biomarkers of immunosenescence and aging. Here, we use single-cell RNA-sequencing to study the aging peripheral blood in mice and characterize the changes in cell-type composition and transcriptional profiles associated with age. We identified 17 clusters from a total of 14,588 single cells. We detected a general upregulation of antigen processing and presentation and chemokine signaling pathways and a downregulation of genes involved in ribosome pathways with age. In old peripheral blood, we also observed an increased percentage of cells expressing senescence markers (Cdkn1a, and Cdkn2a). In addition, we detected a cluster of activated T cells exclusively found in old blood, with lower expression of Cd28 and higher expression of Bcl2 and Cdkn2a, suggesting that the cells are senescent and resistant to apoptosis.