{ "created_at": "2024-05-31T21:57:15.838942Z", "data": { "amplify": false, "answer": "Several genetic factors are associated with aging. These include the APOE, FOXO3A, and CHRNA3/5 genes, as well as the CDKN2A/B, SH2B3, and MTP genes. Other factors include the HLA-DQA1/DRB1 and LPA regions, and the AKAP2 gene. Additionally, genes highly expressed in the brain, genes involved in neural development and function, and genes associated with autophagy have been linked to aging.", "context": { "022c37a3-3ea8-4bb7-9997-98ed87635770": [ { "document_id": "022c37a3-3ea8-4bb7-9997-98ed87635770", "text": "\n\nGenomic analysis of longevity offers the potential to illuminate the biology of human aging.Here, using genome-wide association meta-analysis of 606,059 parents' survival, we discover two regions associated with longevity (HLA-DQA1/DRB1 and LPA).We also validate previous suggestions that APOE, CHRNA3/5, CDKN2A/B, SH2B3 and FOXO3A influence longevity.Next we show that giving up smoking, educational attainment, openness to new experience and high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol levels are most positively genetically correlated with lifespan while susceptibility to coronary artery disease (CAD), cigarettes smoked per day, lung cancer, insulin resistance and body fat are most negatively correlated.We suggest that the effect of education on lifespan is principally mediated through smoking while the effect of obesity appears to act via CAD.Using instrumental variables, we suggest that an increase of one body mass index unit reduces lifespan by 7 months while 1 year of education adds 11 months to expected lifespan." }, { "document_id": "022c37a3-3ea8-4bb7-9997-98ed87635770", "text": "\nGenomic analysis of longevity offers the potential to illuminate the biology of human aging.Here, using genome-wide association meta-analysis of 606,059 parents' survival, we discover two regions associated with longevity (HLA-DQA1/DRB1 and LPA).We also validate previous suggestions that APOE, CHRNA3/5, CDKN2A/B, SH2B3 and FOXO3A influence longevity.Next we show that giving up smoking, educational attainment, openness to new experience and high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol levels are most positively genetically correlated with lifespan while susceptibility to coronary artery disease (CAD), cigarettes smoked per day, lung cancer, insulin resistance and body fat are most negatively correlated.We suggest that the effect of education on lifespan is principally mediated through smoking while the effect of obesity appears to act via CAD.Using instrumental variables, we suggest that an increase of one body mass index unit reduces lifespan by 7 months while 1 year of education adds 11 months to expected lifespan." } ], "03a4f57c-3a11-4d3d-a1e9-6d0d8bdb7cb7": [ { "document_id": "03a4f57c-3a11-4d3d-a1e9-6d0d8bdb7cb7", "text": "\n\nRecent developments on the genetics of aging can be seen as several streams of effort.In general, humans show a relatively modest (<50%) heritability of life spans (results obtained from twin studies discussed below).The apoE polymorphisms are remarkable for their influence on both cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer disease.In contrast, rare mutant genes with high penetrance cause these same diseases but with early onset and a major shortening of the life span.Shortlived laboratory models (fruit flies, nematodes, mice) are yielding rapid advances, with the discovery of mutants that increase life spans in association with altered metabolism, which leads to questions on the physiological organization of aging processes.Although these early findings do not show that a conserved genetic program actually controls aging processes across animal phylogeny, it is striking how frequently findings of metabolic rate, insulin signaling, and free radicals have emerged from very different approaches to aging in nematodes and mammals, for example.These findings hint that the genetic control of life span was already developed in the common ancestor of modern animals so that subsequent evolution of life spans was mediated by quantitative changes in the control of metabolism through insulin and the production of free radicals." } ], "04c5378f-40dc-4690-af03-e5205779b881": [ { "document_id": "04c5378f-40dc-4690-af03-e5205779b881", "text": "\nBackground: Genetic research on longevity has provided important insights into the mechanism of aging and aging-related diseases.Pinpointing import genetic variants associated with aging could provide insights for aging research.Methods: We performed a whole-genome sequencing in 19 centenarians to establish the genetic basis of human longevity.Results: Using SKAT analysis, we found 41 significantly correlated genes in centenarians as compared to control genomes.Pathway enrichment analysis of these genes showed that immune-related pathways were enriched, suggesting that immune pathways might be critically involved in aging.HLA typing was next performed based on the whole-genome sequencing data obtained.We discovered that several HLA subtypes were significantly overrepresented.Conclusions: Our study indicated a new mechanism of longevity, suggesting potential genetic variants for further study." } ], "0942fb8b-731c-4d6e-9b5a-8a303012eec6": [ { "document_id": "0942fb8b-731c-4d6e-9b5a-8a303012eec6", "text": "\nBackground: Biological aging estimators derived from DNA methylation data are heritable and correlate with morbidity and mortality.Consequently, identification of genetic and environmental contributors to the variation in these measures in populations has become a major goal in the field.Results: Leveraging DNA methylation and SNP data from more than 40,000 individuals, we identify 137 genome-wide significant loci, of which 113 are novel, from genome-wide association study (GWAS) meta-analyses of four epigenetic clocks and epigenetic surrogate markers for granulocyte proportions and plasminogen activator inhibitor 1 levels, respectively.We find evidence for shared genetic loci associated with the Horvath clock and expression of transcripts encoding genes linked to lipid metabolism and immune function.Notably, these loci are independent of those reported to regulate DNA methylation levels at constituent clock CpGs.A polygenic score for GrimAge acceleration showed strong associations with adiposityrelated traits, educational attainment, parental longevity, and C-reactive protein levels.Conclusion: This study illuminates the genetic architecture underlying epigenetic aging and its shared genetic contributions with lifestyle factors and longevity." } ], "1386c8ad-297d-48b1-aa34-41659a9f6544": [ { "document_id": "1386c8ad-297d-48b1-aa34-41659a9f6544", "text": "INTRODUCTION\n\nHuman aging is affected by genes, life style, and environmental factors.The genetic contribution to average human aging can be modest with genes explaining ∼20-25% of the variability of human survival to the mid-eighties (Herskind et al., 1996;Fraser and Shavlik, 2001).By contrast, genetic factors may have greater impact on survival to the ninth through eleventh decades (Tan et al., 2008).Notably, exceptional longevity is rare and may involve biological mechanisms that differ from those implicated in usual human aging." } ], "4f709611-ea0b-4bcc-a634-df5d518ccb54": [ { "document_id": "4f709611-ea0b-4bcc-a634-df5d518ccb54", "text": "\n\nBefore the advent of NGS technologies, several scientists were interested in the study of allele variants associated with aging, but they were limited by the lack of aging rate biomarkers.Now with NGS technologies, these biomarkers have been emerged such as the epigenetic clock that is described in the DNA methylation sequencing section of this chapter.In this post-genomic era, different strategies have been developed in order to understand the genetic factors involved in aging [17].One strategy used is the study of aging in extreme longevity groups of people, called centenarians.Centenarians are a group that can reach an age above 100 years and has an incidence of 1 every 10,000 people [18].In a pioneering study using extreme longevity people (308 individuals belonging to 137 sibships showing extreme longevity), genome-wide scan analysis identified a region on chromosome 4 associated with extreme longevity [19] that corresponds to the microsomal transfer protein (MTP) [20], which is associated with abetalipoproteinemia and hypobeta lipoproteinemia in humans [21,22].Another approach to study the genetic factors involved in longevity consists in assessing allele frequencies from people of different ages, looking for those polymorphisms (SNPs) with enhanced allele frequencies in high-longevity individuals.Those alleles with diminished frequencies in aged individuals may be associated with age-related diseases.Using this approximation, an SNP that shifts isoleucine to valine was identified in the PKA-anchoring protein (AKAP2) gene.This polymorphism is associated with reduced longevity and cardiac disease [23].Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have confirmed only three loci that affect longevity: FOXO3A, APOE, and an intergenic locus on chromosome 5q33.3[24][25][26]." } ], "555a1533-2905-4d91-a3b6-2fca3679ab02": [ { "document_id": "555a1533-2905-4d91-a3b6-2fca3679ab02", "text": "\n\nEven more disappointing result is that some genes predisposing to geriatric diseases discovered by GWAS appear to be not correlated with human longevity (Beekman et al. 2010;Deelen et al. 2011).This result questions whether findings obtained from GWAS may provide insights into the bio-genetic mechanisms underlying a healthy lifespan.In fact, this finding is very surprising because (1) genetic studies of non-human species have discovered numerous genes predisposing to aging-related processes (Cutler and Mattson 2006;Vijg and Suh 2005;Kenyon 2005;Johnson 2006;Greer and Brunet 2008), (2) nongenetic association studies show that the long-living individuals are typically in better health compared to the short-living individuals (Barzilai et al. 2003;Willcox et al. 2008b;Willcox et al. 2008a;Evert et al. 2003), and (3) candidate-gene studies (but not GWAS) document that the same genes can affect diseases and lifespan (Koropatnick et al. 2008;Kulminski et al. 2011).This is an apparent paradox which has to be carefully examined.A prominent geneticist and evolutionary biologist T. G. Dobzhansky asserts that \"nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. \"Evolution primarily maximizes fitness of individuals of reproductive age.The classical evolutionary biological theory of aging claims that aging occurs because of decline in the force of natural selection with age (Kirkwood and Austad 2000).Then, according to that theory, aging-related (senescent) phenotypes with post-reproductive manifestation are non-adaptive and subject to stochastic variation.Therefore, at a first glance evolution should not be relevant to senescent phenotypes (apart so-called grandmother hypothesis; Hawkes et al. 1998).Such phenotypes, however, can be caused by reproductive-age-related risk factors making, thus, evolution to be relevant to them (Vijg and Suh 2005;Di Rienzo and Hudson 2005;Drenos and Kirkwood 2010)." }, { "document_id": "555a1533-2905-4d91-a3b6-2fca3679ab02", "text": "\n\nOn the other hand, the same evolutionary-motivated strategy suggesting to focus on more heterogeneous phenotypes (as opposite to more homogenous) can be highly beneficial for unraveling genetic predisposition to fundamental mechanisms of intrinsic biological aging and, consequently, to geriatric diseases.Indeed, aging is associated with systemic remodeling of an organism's functioning which increases chances of virtually all geriatric disorders (Franco et al. 2009;Franceschi et al. 2000;Martin et al. 2007;Cutler and Mattson 2006).Experiments with laboratory animals (Johnson 2006) and heritability estimates in humans (Christensen et al. 2006;Iachine et al. 1998) show that aging can be genetically regulated (Finch and Tanzi 1997;Martin et al. 2007;Vaupel 2010).Accordingly, yielding insights in genetic predisposition to aging-related processes in an organism could be a major breakthrough in preventing and/or ameliorating not one geriatric trait, but perhaps a major subset of such traits (Martin et al. 2007) that can greatly advance progress in solving the problem of extending healthy lifespan in humans." } ], "57e2d0f5-c5eb-4ba6-8101-5bacaed53cb4": [ { "document_id": "57e2d0f5-c5eb-4ba6-8101-5bacaed53cb4", "text": "\n\nIn conclusion, we performed a genome-wide association study of longevity-related phenotypes in individuals of European, East Asian and African American ancestry and identified the APOE and GPR78 loci to be associated with these phenotypes in our study.Moreover, our gene-level association analyses highlight a role for tissue-specific expression of genes at chromosome 5q13.3,12q13.2,17q21.31,and 19q13.32 in longevity.Genetic correlation analyses show that our longevity-related phenotypes are genetically correlated with several disease-related phenotypes, which in turn could help to identify phenotypes that could be used as potential biomarkers for longevity in future (genetic) studies." } ], "7291ceb2-482a-4f9b-a116-2b68ff24854f": [ { "document_id": "7291ceb2-482a-4f9b-a116-2b68ff24854f", "text": "\n\nM OST genetic studies involved with aging have focused on identifying genes contributing to particular diseases.More recently, it has been recognized that it is also valuable to examine genetic factors related to diseasefree or healthy aging (1,2).Utilizing twins from the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council (NAS-NRC) twin panel, we have demonstrated that healthy physical aging is under a significant degree of genetic influence, with a heritability over 50% (3).Our definition of healthy aging focused principally on freedom from cardiovascular disease, and has received considerable support in the more recent literature.Brand and colleagues (4) reported that parental age at death was a significant predictor of coronary heart disease death in the Framingham offspring study and concluded that familial similarities for age at death may be mediated through shared coronary heart disease risk factors.Frederiksen and colleagues (5) reported that increased parental life was associated with a reduction in odds ratio for their children to have diabetes, ischemic heart disease, heart failure, stroke, and hypertension.We have found that better midlife lipid levels and blood pressures were associated with increased parental longevity in the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute twin study (6).Centenarian siblings and offspring, besides having increased longevity, have been shown to have better health and better cardiovascular risk factor profiles (7)(8)(9)(10)." } ], "932ef21b-9235-4210-a99c-6153a901bb89": [ { "document_id": "932ef21b-9235-4210-a99c-6153a901bb89", "text": "\n\nThe lack of success in the identification of genes related to aging in humans may be due to the complexity of the phenotype.One approach to investigate aging and longevity is to compare frequencies of genetic variants between nonagenarians or centenarians and the general population.This approach led to the discovery of an association between APOE (Deelen et al., 2011;Ewbank, 2007;Gerdes et al., 2000) and more recently FOXO3A (Anselmi et al., 2009;Flachsbart et al., 2009;Li et al., 2009a;Pawlikowska et al., 2009;Willcox et al., 2008) and human aging and longevity.However, a recent genome-wide association study (GWAS) of individuals reaching the age of 90 or older failed to identify genome-wide significant variants (Newman et al., 2010)." }, { "document_id": "932ef21b-9235-4210-a99c-6153a901bb89", "text": "\n\nHuman longevity and healthy aging show moderate heritability (20%-50%).We conducted a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies from 9 studies from the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology Consortium for 2 outcomes: (1) all-cause mortality, and (2) survival free of major disease or death.No single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) was a genome-wide significant predictor of either outcome (p Ͻ 5 ϫ 10 Ϫ8 ).We found 14 independent SNPs that predicted risk of death, and 8 SNPs that predicted event-free survival (p Ͻ 10 Ϫ5 ).These SNPs are in or near genes that are highly expressed in the brain (HECW2, HIP1, BIN2, GRIA1), genes involved in neural development and function (KCNQ4, LMO4, GRIA1, NETO1) and autophagy (ATG4C), and genes that are associated with risk of various diseases including cancer and Alzheimer's disease.In addition to considerable overlap between the traits, pathway and network analysis corroborated these findings.These findings indicate that variation in genes involved in neurological processes may be an important factor in regulating aging free of major disease and achieving longevity." }, { "document_id": "932ef21b-9235-4210-a99c-6153a901bb89", "text": "Introduction\n\nThe recent, remarkable extension of life expectancy is largely attributed to the postponement of mortality at old age (Vaupel, 1997(Vaupel, , 2010)).The years of life gained in the older population residing in developed nations are a success story of public health measures and improved health care.In addition to such external factors, longevity and healthy aging consistently show a modest heritability between 20% and 50% and aging-associated genetic research may provide further insights into the mechanisms of aging (Herskind et al., 1996;McGue et al., 1993;Reed and Dick, 2003).It has been postulated that genes involved in pathways associated with aging identified in animal models, such as insulin-like growth factor (IGF)-insulin signaling, regulation of lipoprotein metabolism, the mTOR pathway, and the oxidative stress response may also influence survival to old or even exceptionally old age in humans (Christensen et al., 2006;Kenyon, 2010;Vellai et al., 2003).However, in humans, common variants within genes involved in these pathways have not been consistently associated with lifespan (Chris-tensen et al., 2006;Kenyon, 2010;Kuningas et al., 2008;Vijg and Suh, 2005)." }, { "document_id": "932ef21b-9235-4210-a99c-6153a901bb89", "text": "\nHuman longevity and healthy aging show moderate heritability (20%-50%).We conducted a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies from 9 studies from the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology Consortium for 2 outcomes: (1) all-cause mortality, and (2) survival free of major disease or death.No single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) was a genome-wide significant predictor of either outcome (p Ͻ 5 ϫ 10 Ϫ8 ).We found 14 independent SNPs that predicted risk of death, and 8 SNPs that predicted event-free survival (p Ͻ 10 Ϫ5 ).These SNPs are in or near genes that are highly expressed in the brain (HECW2, HIP1, BIN2, GRIA1), genes involved in neural development and function (KCNQ4, LMO4, GRIA1, NETO1) and autophagy (ATG4C), and genes that are associated with risk of various diseases including cancer and Alzheimer's disease.In addition to considerable overlap between the traits, pathway and network analysis corroborated these findings.These findings indicate that variation in genes involved in neurological processes may be an important factor in regulating aging free of major disease and achieving longevity." } ], "ca76f85d-9f72-4e15-8ba9-3bf94308c449": [ { "document_id": "ca76f85d-9f72-4e15-8ba9-3bf94308c449", "text": "\n\nMany factors contribute to aging, including genes.This is the first article in a 10-part series that highlight some of what is known about the influence of genes on aging and emerging treatment options that may slow down or potentially reverse the aging process.The series will address \\genes, adducts, and telomeres, decreased immune defenses, oxidation and inefficient mitochondria, toxins and radiation, glycosylation, caloric intake and sirtuin production, neurotransmitter imbalance, hormone mechanisms, reduced nitric oxide, and stem cell slowdown.Underpinning these factors are wear and tear on cells and aging as a result of inability to repair or replace these affected cells.These topics have been addressed in research, health magazines, and even by talk show hosts.There is even a LongevityMap website addressing significant and nonsignificant genetic association studies in aging across the human genome (http://genomics.senescence.info/longevity/).The series will address a scientific and clinical approach to genome-related aging topics." } ], "d174ea46-2c88-4047-a333-cb66e483a51f": [ { "document_id": "d174ea46-2c88-4047-a333-cb66e483a51f", "text": "\n\nThe genetic basis of human longevity has so far been primarily investigated by association studies.Most results from these experiments have been difficult to confirm in independent samples, probably owing to the modest heritability, multifactorial nature, and heterogeneity of the phenotype (Christensen et al., 2006).To date, variation in only two genes has been identified, which has an effect on longevity in various populations: (i) the apolipoprotein E gene (APOE) (Scha ¨chter et al., 1994;Christensen et al., 2006) and (ii) the forkhead box O3A (FOXO3A) gene in the insulin-IGF1 signaling (IIS) pathway (Willcox et al., 2008;Flachsbart et al., 2009).Given the apparent lack of susceptibility candidates, it is conceivable that other genetic factors influence the function or expression of genes relevant for human longevity." } ], "db90a971-e55a-4ab0-a3b1-05908d6771a4": [ { "document_id": "db90a971-e55a-4ab0-a3b1-05908d6771a4", "text": "Introduction\n\nApproximately 25-30% of the variation in adult lifespan is attributable to genetic factors that become more important with increasing age and exert their strongest effects in nonagenarians and centenarians (Go ¨gele et al., 2010;Hjelmborg et al., 2006).As yet, however, only a few genetic variants have been found consistently to influence longevity.The first to be discovered was the e4 allele of the apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene, a mortality factor that predisposes to both Alzheimer's and cardiovascular diseases (Corder et al., 1993; Panza et al., 2004).APOE e4 is the only variant with a reportedly large adverse effect upon survival at advanced age (Scha ¨chter et al., 1994), and this association has been replicated in several populations (Christensen et al., 2006).Variation in the human forkhead box O3A gene (FOXO3A), in contrast, has been found to be associated with the ability to live long, an effect corroborated by studies in Japanese, German, Italian, US-American, Jewish, Chinese and Danish populations (Anselmi et al., 2009;Flachsbart et al., 2009;Li et al., 2009;Pawlikowska et al., 2009;Soerensen et al., 2010;Willcox et al., 2008).More recently, we have identified exonuclease 1 (EXO1) as a potential novel longevity gene (Nebel et al., 2009).All three genes were detected through candidate-gene approaches." } ], "f2b8524b-501d-4ec7-a3d7-048aab67ce05": [ { "document_id": "f2b8524b-501d-4ec7-a3d7-048aab67ce05", "text": "GenAge: the aging gene database Philosophy and overview of resources\n\nIt is undisputed that genetic factors influence aging.In a remarkable series of recent breakthroughs, a number of genes capable of altering the aging process as a whole -or at least to a large degree -have been identified in animal models and even a few in humans (Finch & Ruvkun, 2001;de Magalhães, 2005;Kenyon, 2005).Furthermore, multiple alleles have been examined for their association with human exceptional longevity (Vijg & Suh, 2005).This is a fascinating and important area of research, yet there are now so many genes being associated with aging and longevity that keeping track of them all is becoming increasingly more difficult.Moreover, it is necessary now to study not only individual genes but their interactions with each other and with the environment, and how together genes give rise to a given phenotype: the so-called systems biology approach.To help researchers address these issues we created GenAge, a database of genes related to longevity and/or aging." } ], "f4e2fa75-559b-4fa9-b722-bdac03f7715a": [ { "document_id": "f4e2fa75-559b-4fa9-b722-bdac03f7715a", "text": "\n\nI NCREASES in longevity of the general population world- wide are an unprecedented phenomenon with significant health and social impact.Although environmental factors have led to an increase in life span, there is ample evidence that genetic factors are involved in extreme longevity both in humans (1-7) and in other organisms (8).The protective genetic factors that lead to longevity are likely to involve fundamental processes of aging that may be different from those associated with early mortality or premature onset of age-related diseases in younger individuals.The mechanisms of aging in humans are far from understood, but available evidence suggests that several pathways-inflammation, oxidative stress and stress responses, cellular senescence, DNA damage and repair, and the growth hormone or insulinlike growth factor and insulin (GH, IGF, INS) axis-may play key roles (9)(10)(11)(12).Model organisms suggest that inhibiting the GH, IGF, or INS axis, which is involved in regulating cell proliferation, cell death, wound repair, and metabolism, may promote longevity by reducing oxidative stress and slowing the rate of cell replication and the accumulation of somatic-cell DNA mutations (13).There is also evidence for other important pathways such as the heatshock proteins and heat-shock factors that are highly conserved across species and play a role in prolongevity transcription pathways.Clinical and epidemiological investigations, including candidate gene studies, have suggested that inflammation pathways may affect life span and risk of age-related conditions such as cardiovascular disease (CVD) and its risk factors (14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19).A combination of multiple genetic variants may be required for an individual to achieve exceptional longevity, which may account in part for its rarity." } ] }, "data_source": [ { "document_id": "4f709611-ea0b-4bcc-a634-df5d518ccb54", "section_type": "main", "text": "\n\nBefore the advent of NGS technologies, several scientists were interested in the study of allele variants associated with aging, but they were limited by the lack of aging rate biomarkers.Now with NGS technologies, these biomarkers have been emerged such as the epigenetic clock that is described in the DNA methylation sequencing section of this chapter.In this post-genomic era, different strategies have been developed in order to understand the genetic factors involved in aging [17].One strategy used is the study of aging in extreme longevity groups of people, called centenarians.Centenarians are a group that can reach an age above 100 years and has an incidence of 1 every 10,000 people [18].In a pioneering study using extreme longevity people (308 individuals belonging to 137 sibships showing extreme longevity), genome-wide scan analysis identified a region on chromosome 4 associated with extreme longevity [19] that corresponds to the microsomal transfer protein (MTP) [20], which is associated with abetalipoproteinemia and hypobeta lipoproteinemia in humans [21,22].Another approach to study the genetic factors involved in longevity consists in assessing allele frequencies from people of different ages, looking for those polymorphisms (SNPs) with enhanced allele frequencies in high-longevity individuals.Those alleles with diminished frequencies in aged individuals may be associated with age-related diseases.Using this approximation, an SNP that shifts isoleucine to valine was identified in the PKA-anchoring protein (AKAP2) gene.This polymorphism is associated with reduced longevity and cardiac disease [23].Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have confirmed only three loci that affect longevity: FOXO3A, APOE, and an intergenic locus on chromosome 5q33.3[24][25][26]." }, { "document_id": "7291ceb2-482a-4f9b-a116-2b68ff24854f", "section_type": "main", "text": "\n\nM OST genetic studies involved with aging have focused on identifying genes contributing to particular diseases.More recently, it has been recognized that it is also valuable to examine genetic factors related to diseasefree or healthy aging (1,2).Utilizing twins from the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council (NAS-NRC) twin panel, we have demonstrated that healthy physical aging is under a significant degree of genetic influence, with a heritability over 50% (3).Our definition of healthy aging focused principally on freedom from cardiovascular disease, and has received considerable support in the more recent literature.Brand and colleagues (4) reported that parental age at death was a significant predictor of coronary heart disease death in the Framingham offspring study and concluded that familial similarities for age at death may be mediated through shared coronary heart disease risk factors.Frederiksen and colleagues (5) reported that increased parental life was associated with a reduction in odds ratio for their children to have diabetes, ischemic heart disease, heart failure, stroke, and hypertension.We have found that better midlife lipid levels and blood pressures were associated with increased parental longevity in the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute twin study (6).Centenarian siblings and offspring, besides having increased longevity, have been shown to have better health and better cardiovascular risk factor profiles (7)(8)(9)(10)." }, { "document_id": "022c37a3-3ea8-4bb7-9997-98ed87635770", "section_type": "main", "text": "\n\nGenomic analysis of longevity offers the potential to illuminate the biology of human aging.Here, using genome-wide association meta-analysis of 606,059 parents' survival, we discover two regions associated with longevity (HLA-DQA1/DRB1 and LPA).We also validate previous suggestions that APOE, CHRNA3/5, CDKN2A/B, SH2B3 and FOXO3A influence longevity.Next we show that giving up smoking, educational attainment, openness to new experience and high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol levels are most positively genetically correlated with lifespan while susceptibility to coronary artery disease (CAD), cigarettes smoked per day, lung cancer, insulin resistance and body fat are most negatively correlated.We suggest that the effect of education on lifespan is principally mediated through smoking while the effect of obesity appears to act via CAD.Using instrumental variables, we suggest that an increase of one body mass index unit reduces lifespan by 7 months while 1 year of education adds 11 months to expected lifespan." }, { "document_id": "022c37a3-3ea8-4bb7-9997-98ed87635770", "section_type": "abstract", "text": "\nGenomic analysis of longevity offers the potential to illuminate the biology of human aging.Here, using genome-wide association meta-analysis of 606,059 parents' survival, we discover two regions associated with longevity (HLA-DQA1/DRB1 and LPA).We also validate previous suggestions that APOE, CHRNA3/5, CDKN2A/B, SH2B3 and FOXO3A influence longevity.Next we show that giving up smoking, educational attainment, openness to new experience and high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol levels are most positively genetically correlated with lifespan while susceptibility to coronary artery disease (CAD), cigarettes smoked per day, lung cancer, insulin resistance and body fat are most negatively correlated.We suggest that the effect of education on lifespan is principally mediated through smoking while the effect of obesity appears to act via CAD.Using instrumental variables, we suggest that an increase of one body mass index unit reduces lifespan by 7 months while 1 year of education adds 11 months to expected lifespan." }, { "document_id": "932ef21b-9235-4210-a99c-6153a901bb89", "section_type": "main", "text": "\n\nThe lack of success in the identification of genes related to aging in humans may be due to the complexity of the phenotype.One approach to investigate aging and longevity is to compare frequencies of genetic variants between nonagenarians or centenarians and the general population.This approach led to the discovery of an association between APOE (Deelen et al., 2011;Ewbank, 2007;Gerdes et al., 2000) and more recently FOXO3A (Anselmi et al., 2009;Flachsbart et al., 2009;Li et al., 2009a;Pawlikowska et al., 2009;Willcox et al., 2008) and human aging and longevity.However, a recent genome-wide association study (GWAS) of individuals reaching the age of 90 or older failed to identify genome-wide significant variants (Newman et al., 2010)." }, { "document_id": "d174ea46-2c88-4047-a333-cb66e483a51f", "section_type": "main", "text": "\n\nThe genetic basis of human longevity has so far been primarily investigated by association studies.Most results from these experiments have been difficult to confirm in independent samples, probably owing to the modest heritability, multifactorial nature, and heterogeneity of the phenotype (Christensen et al., 2006).To date, variation in only two genes has been identified, which has an effect on longevity in various populations: (i) the apolipoprotein E gene (APOE) (Scha ¨chter et al., 1994;Christensen et al., 2006) and (ii) the forkhead box O3A (FOXO3A) gene in the insulin-IGF1 signaling (IIS) pathway (Willcox et al., 2008;Flachsbart et al., 2009).Given the apparent lack of susceptibility candidates, it is conceivable that other genetic factors influence the function or expression of genes relevant for human longevity." }, { "document_id": "555a1533-2905-4d91-a3b6-2fca3679ab02", "section_type": "main", "text": "\n\nEven more disappointing result is that some genes predisposing to geriatric diseases discovered by GWAS appear to be not correlated with human longevity (Beekman et al. 2010;Deelen et al. 2011).This result questions whether findings obtained from GWAS may provide insights into the bio-genetic mechanisms underlying a healthy lifespan.In fact, this finding is very surprising because (1) genetic studies of non-human species have discovered numerous genes predisposing to aging-related processes (Cutler and Mattson 2006;Vijg and Suh 2005;Kenyon 2005;Johnson 2006;Greer and Brunet 2008), (2) nongenetic association studies show that the long-living individuals are typically in better health compared to the short-living individuals (Barzilai et al. 2003;Willcox et al. 2008b;Willcox et al. 2008a;Evert et al. 2003), and (3) candidate-gene studies (but not GWAS) document that the same genes can affect diseases and lifespan (Koropatnick et al. 2008;Kulminski et al. 2011).This is an apparent paradox which has to be carefully examined.A prominent geneticist and evolutionary biologist T. G. Dobzhansky asserts that \"nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. \"Evolution primarily maximizes fitness of individuals of reproductive age.The classical evolutionary biological theory of aging claims that aging occurs because of decline in the force of natural selection with age (Kirkwood and Austad 2000).Then, according to that theory, aging-related (senescent) phenotypes with post-reproductive manifestation are non-adaptive and subject to stochastic variation.Therefore, at a first glance evolution should not be relevant to senescent phenotypes (apart so-called grandmother hypothesis; Hawkes et al. 1998).Such phenotypes, however, can be caused by reproductive-age-related risk factors making, thus, evolution to be relevant to them (Vijg and Suh 2005;Di Rienzo and Hudson 2005;Drenos and Kirkwood 2010)." }, { "document_id": "f2b8524b-501d-4ec7-a3d7-048aab67ce05", "section_type": "main", "text": "GenAge: the aging gene database Philosophy and overview of resources\n\nIt is undisputed that genetic factors influence aging.In a remarkable series of recent breakthroughs, a number of genes capable of altering the aging process as a whole -or at least to a large degree -have been identified in animal models and even a few in humans (Finch & Ruvkun, 2001;de Magalhães, 2005;Kenyon, 2005).Furthermore, multiple alleles have been examined for their association with human exceptional longevity (Vijg & Suh, 2005).This is a fascinating and important area of research, yet there are now so many genes being associated with aging and longevity that keeping track of them all is becoming increasingly more difficult.Moreover, it is necessary now to study not only individual genes but their interactions with each other and with the environment, and how together genes give rise to a given phenotype: the so-called systems biology approach.To help researchers address these issues we created GenAge, a database of genes related to longevity and/or aging." }, { "document_id": "555a1533-2905-4d91-a3b6-2fca3679ab02", "section_type": "main", "text": "\n\nOn the other hand, the same evolutionary-motivated strategy suggesting to focus on more heterogeneous phenotypes (as opposite to more homogenous) can be highly beneficial for unraveling genetic predisposition to fundamental mechanisms of intrinsic biological aging and, consequently, to geriatric diseases.Indeed, aging is associated with systemic remodeling of an organism's functioning which increases chances of virtually all geriatric disorders (Franco et al. 2009;Franceschi et al. 2000;Martin et al. 2007;Cutler and Mattson 2006).Experiments with laboratory animals (Johnson 2006) and heritability estimates in humans (Christensen et al. 2006;Iachine et al. 1998) show that aging can be genetically regulated (Finch and Tanzi 1997;Martin et al. 2007;Vaupel 2010).Accordingly, yielding insights in genetic predisposition to aging-related processes in an organism could be a major breakthrough in preventing and/or ameliorating not one geriatric trait, but perhaps a major subset of such traits (Martin et al. 2007) that can greatly advance progress in solving the problem of extending healthy lifespan in humans." }, { "document_id": "4a27da1c-b184-47e8-bef2-de6435d7c3f5", "section_type": "main", "text": "\n\nAdditional association studies with these families and replication of these results with an independent data set should facilitate the positional cloning of a gene that influences the ability to age well and achieve exceptional longevity.Identification of the genes in humans that allow certain individuals to live to extreme old age should lead to insights on cellular pathways that are important to the aging process." }, { "document_id": "ea036684-619d-4b82-9242-c0b220f2d8df", "section_type": "main", "text": "The mechanisms that underlie healthy aging—particularly, the cognitive as-\n\npects—remain poorly understood. Research suggests that genetics play a significant role in determining an individual’s\nsusceptibility or resilience to cognitive decline and dementia\n(Harris and Deary 2011; Ridge et al. , 2013). Identification of precise genetic factors involved would provide insight into\n\nCell Reports 32, 108091, September 1, 2020 ª 2020 The Author(s). 1\nThis is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).\n ll\nOPEN ACCESS\n\nReport\n\nFigure 1." }, { "document_id": "932ef21b-9235-4210-a99c-6153a901bb89", "section_type": "main", "text": "Discussion\n\nIn our analyses of over 25,000 individuals of 55 years and older followed for an average of 11 years, we did not identify genome-wide significant associations for all-cause mortality and survival free of major diseases.However, both traits highlighted loci with suggestive significance that were in the neighborhood of genes related to neural regulation.In addition, our pathway and network analyses identified an enrichment of genes associated with cellular and neural development and function, and cell communication that may contribute to variation in human aging.Brain development might be responsible for the creation of redundancy in brain circuitry, which is associated with functional reserve and resiliency.Brain function regulates most of the compensatory strategy supporting maintenance of homeostatic equilibrium.Both of these processes are essential to healthy aging and longevity." }, { "document_id": "ca76f85d-9f72-4e15-8ba9-3bf94308c449", "section_type": "main", "text": "\n\nMany factors contribute to aging, including genes.This is the first article in a 10-part series that highlight some of what is known about the influence of genes on aging and emerging treatment options that may slow down or potentially reverse the aging process.The series will address \\genes, adducts, and telomeres, decreased immune defenses, oxidation and inefficient mitochondria, toxins and radiation, glycosylation, caloric intake and sirtuin production, neurotransmitter imbalance, hormone mechanisms, reduced nitric oxide, and stem cell slowdown.Underpinning these factors are wear and tear on cells and aging as a result of inability to repair or replace these affected cells.These topics have been addressed in research, health magazines, and even by talk show hosts.There is even a LongevityMap website addressing significant and nonsignificant genetic association studies in aging across the human genome (http://genomics.senescence.info/longevity/).The series will address a scientific and clinical approach to genome-related aging topics." }, { "document_id": "593b752f-f448-47be-8b83-13bc5e9eb0d4", "section_type": "main", "text": "\n\nIn this light, we pursued a genomic study of an alternate but related aging phenotype-healthy aging-in order to expose its potential to uncover genetic factors for protection against age-associated disease.It is important to differentiate longevity from our healthy aging phenotype, which, as we have defined it for our healthy aging cohort (Wellderly), attempts to understand the genetics of disease-free aging in humans without medical interventions.Toward this end, we performed whole-genome sequencing (WGS) of the Wellderly and compared their genetic characteristics to an ethnicity-matched population control.Our findings suggest that healthy aging is associated with a diseaseprotective genetic profile that overlaps with but differs from that observed in exceptional longevity cohorts.These findings include no enrichment of true longevity variants, a lower genetic risk from common susceptibility alleles for Alzheimer and coronary artery disease, and no decrease in the rate of rare pathogenic variants.We identify suggestive common and rare variant genetic associations that implicate genetic protection against cognitive decline in healthy aging.Our data are made available for the discovery of additional disease protective genetic factors by the research community." }, { "document_id": "932ef21b-9235-4210-a99c-6153a901bb89", "section_type": "main", "text": "\n\nHuman longevity and healthy aging show moderate heritability (20%-50%).We conducted a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies from 9 studies from the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology Consortium for 2 outcomes: (1) all-cause mortality, and (2) survival free of major disease or death.No single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) was a genome-wide significant predictor of either outcome (p Ͻ 5 ϫ 10 Ϫ8 ).We found 14 independent SNPs that predicted risk of death, and 8 SNPs that predicted event-free survival (p Ͻ 10 Ϫ5 ).These SNPs are in or near genes that are highly expressed in the brain (HECW2, HIP1, BIN2, GRIA1), genes involved in neural development and function (KCNQ4, LMO4, GRIA1, NETO1) and autophagy (ATG4C), and genes that are associated with risk of various diseases including cancer and Alzheimer's disease.In addition to considerable overlap between the traits, pathway and network analysis corroborated these findings.These findings indicate that variation in genes involved in neurological processes may be an important factor in regulating aging free of major disease and achieving longevity." }, { "document_id": "1386c8ad-297d-48b1-aa34-41659a9f6544", "section_type": "main", "text": "INTRODUCTION\n\nHuman aging is affected by genes, life style, and environmental factors.The genetic contribution to average human aging can be modest with genes explaining ∼20-25% of the variability of human survival to the mid-eighties (Herskind et al., 1996;Fraser and Shavlik, 2001).By contrast, genetic factors may have greater impact on survival to the ninth through eleventh decades (Tan et al., 2008).Notably, exceptional longevity is rare and may involve biological mechanisms that differ from those implicated in usual human aging." }, { "document_id": "99a35e24-bbd2-495b-82dc-53d7e2075191", "section_type": "main", "text": "\n\nThus, substantially more work is needed in this area to establish whether longevity is driven by nuclear genomic stability.Diverse and unexpected bits of evidence support a relationship.For example, a disproportionate number of genes identified in unbiased and targeted genome-wide association studies (GWASs) as associated with longevity are involved in genome maintenance (75).One study involved age of natural menopause in ∼70,000 women and led to the identification of 44 genetic variants associated with early or late menopause, a strong biomarker of healthy TIFs (telomere dysfunction-induced foci): co-localization of multiple DNA damage response factors and repair proteins on uncapped telomeric DNA aging (76).Approximately two-thirds of these are associated with genome maintenance genes.Seven of ten significantly associated pathways are involved in DNA repair.The highly significant overrepresentation of DNA repair pathways indicates an intimate connection between genome maintenance and aging phenotypes.From unrelated studies, we know that reduced expression of the repair endonuclease ERCC1-XPF causes accelerated aging (3), whereas ERCC1 is one of the top genes under positive selective pressure in the longest-lived mammalian species, the bowhead whale (77).Intriguingly, hepatocytes from old rats have impaired NER, whereas caloric restriction, which extends longevity, restored the NER capacity of old rats to that of youthful levels (42).In a human interventional study, brief caloric restriction increased NER capacity in PBMCs of individuals who had low NER prior to dietary intervention (78).Therefore, increased DNA repair capacity could promote longevity and may even prove amenable to improvement." }, { "document_id": "555a1533-2905-4d91-a3b6-2fca3679ab02", "section_type": "main", "text": "\n\nInvolvement of genes in a wide range of fundamental biological processes suggests also a broad role of these genes in regulating the aging-related phenotypes." }, { "document_id": "4f709611-ea0b-4bcc-a634-df5d518ccb54", "section_type": "main", "text": "\n\nSomatic mutations with the inherited gene variations of each individual cumulatively or synergistically influence the health span and life span [11].Very few genetic variants have been associated with human longevity, but those found include the transcription factor FOXO3 gene, the APOE/TOMM40 and the CDKN2B/ ANRIL loci, which are associated with Alzheimer's disease and cellular senescence [12][13][14].In fact, the heritability for human longevity has been estimated to be approximately 20-30%, according to studies of twins, suggesting that external factors such as diet, environment, physical activity and microbiomes are important factors that influence the health span [14][15][16].The increase in the rate of retrotranscription reflects genome deregulation, creating additional mutations, DNA damage, and other forms of genome instability.For instance, the expression of several families of retrotransposable elements increases with age, as observed in mouse skeletal muscle and human fibroblasts, particularly the long interspersed nuclear element-1 (L1 LINE) [17,18]." }, { "document_id": "932ef21b-9235-4210-a99c-6153a901bb89", "section_type": "abstract", "text": "\nHuman longevity and healthy aging show moderate heritability (20%-50%).We conducted a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies from 9 studies from the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology Consortium for 2 outcomes: (1) all-cause mortality, and (2) survival free of major disease or death.No single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) was a genome-wide significant predictor of either outcome (p Ͻ 5 ϫ 10 Ϫ8 ).We found 14 independent SNPs that predicted risk of death, and 8 SNPs that predicted event-free survival (p Ͻ 10 Ϫ5 ).These SNPs are in or near genes that are highly expressed in the brain (HECW2, HIP1, BIN2, GRIA1), genes involved in neural development and function (KCNQ4, LMO4, GRIA1, NETO1) and autophagy (ATG4C), and genes that are associated with risk of various diseases including cancer and Alzheimer's disease.In addition to considerable overlap between the traits, pathway and network analysis corroborated these findings.These findings indicate that variation in genes involved in neurological processes may be an important factor in regulating aging free of major disease and achieving longevity." }, { "document_id": "0942fb8b-731c-4d6e-9b5a-8a303012eec6", "section_type": "abstract", "text": "\nBackground: Biological aging estimators derived from DNA methylation data are heritable and correlate with morbidity and mortality.Consequently, identification of genetic and environmental contributors to the variation in these measures in populations has become a major goal in the field.Results: Leveraging DNA methylation and SNP data from more than 40,000 individuals, we identify 137 genome-wide significant loci, of which 113 are novel, from genome-wide association study (GWAS) meta-analyses of four epigenetic clocks and epigenetic surrogate markers for granulocyte proportions and plasminogen activator inhibitor 1 levels, respectively.We find evidence for shared genetic loci associated with the Horvath clock and expression of transcripts encoding genes linked to lipid metabolism and immune function.Notably, these loci are independent of those reported to regulate DNA methylation levels at constituent clock CpGs.A polygenic score for GrimAge acceleration showed strong associations with adiposityrelated traits, educational attainment, parental longevity, and C-reactive protein levels.Conclusion: This study illuminates the genetic architecture underlying epigenetic aging and its shared genetic contributions with lifestyle factors and longevity." }, { "document_id": "5e6ad994-9cad-4b8b-903d-2d5c350e25dc", "section_type": "main", "text": "\n\nGene associations with age-related traits found using longitudinal study data." }, { "document_id": "f3610ccc-2831-42f6-a3d3-1a0feeba4902", "section_type": "main", "text": "\n\nGene associations with age-related traits found using longitudinal study data." }, { "document_id": "04c5378f-40dc-4690-af03-e5205779b881", "section_type": "abstract", "text": "\nBackground: Genetic research on longevity has provided important insights into the mechanism of aging and aging-related diseases.Pinpointing import genetic variants associated with aging could provide insights for aging research.Methods: We performed a whole-genome sequencing in 19 centenarians to establish the genetic basis of human longevity.Results: Using SKAT analysis, we found 41 significantly correlated genes in centenarians as compared to control genomes.Pathway enrichment analysis of these genes showed that immune-related pathways were enriched, suggesting that immune pathways might be critically involved in aging.HLA typing was next performed based on the whole-genome sequencing data obtained.We discovered that several HLA subtypes were significantly overrepresented.Conclusions: Our study indicated a new mechanism of longevity, suggesting potential genetic variants for further study." }, { "document_id": "593b752f-f448-47be-8b83-13bc5e9eb0d4", "section_type": "main", "text": "\n\nAge at death in adulthood has a moderate genetic component overall, with a heritability of approximately 25% (Murabito et al., 2012).Heritability of longevity increases with age, with a negligible genetic contribution to survival up to approximately 60 years of age, after which an increasing genetic component to survival is observed (Brooks-Wilson, 2013;Christensen et al., 2006).Most genetic studies of aging have focused on long-lived individuals, typically defined as centenarians 100 years or older, who may have had exceptional survival due to medical interventions (Murabito et al., 2012).A number of genetic associations with exceptional longevity have been made (Atzmon et al., 2006;Bojesen and Nordestgaard, 2008;Hurme et al., 2005;Kuningas et al., 2007;Melzer et al., 2007;Pawlikowska et al., 2009;Sanders et al., 2010;Suh et al., 2008;Willcox et al., 2008), with only markers at APOE and FOXO3A being well replicated (Murabito et al., 2012).Overall, the results of genetic and epidemiological longevity studies suggest aging is a complex trait and that achievement of exceptional longevity may not best capture the genetics of resistance to or delay of age-associated disease (Christensen et al., 2006)." }, { "document_id": "da4a9500-831f-48ab-acea-5ec7097276ed", "section_type": "main", "text": "\n\nStudies in various models have revealed that genetic differences and somatic mutations underlie longevity, but non-genetic contributions also play a major role (Cournil and Kirkwood, 2001).Calorie restriction (Bordone and Guarente, 2005), lowering of basal metabolic rate (Ruggiero et al., 2008), upregulated stress response (Migliaccio et al., 1999), restoration of mi-tonuclear protein balance (Houtkooper et al., 2013), and reduced fertility (Westendorp and Kirkwood, 1998) have all been shown to correlate with lifespan extension.These observations illuminate the role of ''epi''-genetic mechanisms in modulating longevity pathways." }, { "document_id": "4f709611-ea0b-4bcc-a634-df5d518ccb54", "section_type": "main", "text": "Conclusions and Perspectives\n\nThe advent of new technologies has allowed the identification of conserved pathways involved in the aging process, as well as the association of genomic variants with human longevity.Nevertheless, heritability of human longevity has been estimated from 20% to 30%, reinforcing the fact that external factors such as diet, environment, and physical activity play a critical role in the human life span." }, { "document_id": "0fc75a0d-3aa3-481a-8c0f-689bd7ae6104", "section_type": "abstract", "text": "\nAging is a complex process affecting different species and individuals in different ways.Comparing genetic variation across species with their aging phenotypes will help understanding the molecular basis of aging and longevity.Although most studies on aging have so far focused on short-lived model organisms, recent comparisons of genomic, transcriptomic, and metabolomic data across lineages with different lifespans are unveiling molecular signatures associated with longevity.Here, we examine the relationship between genomic variation and maximum lifespan across primate species.We used two different approaches.First, we searched for parallel amino-acid mutations that co-occur with increases in longevity across the primate linage.Twenty-five such amino-acid variants were identified, several of which have been previously reported by studies with different experimental setups and in different model organisms.The genes harboring these mutations are mainly enriched in functional categories such as wound healing, blood coagulation, and cardiovascular disorders.We demonstrate that these pathways are highly enriched for pleiotropic effects, as predicted by the antagonistic pleiotropy theory of aging.A second approach was focused on changes in rates of protein evolution across the primate phylogeny.Using the phylogenetic generalized least squares, we show that some genes exhibit strong correlations between their evolutionary rates and longevity-associated traits.These include genes in the Sphingosine 1-phosphate pathway, PI3K signaling, and the Thrombin/protease-activated receptor pathway, among other cardiovascular processes.Together, these results shed light into human senescence patterns and underscore the power of comparative genomics to identify pathways related to aging and longevity." }, { "document_id": "593b752f-f448-47be-8b83-13bc5e9eb0d4", "section_type": "abstract", "text": "\nHighlights d Healthy aging is a complex polygenic trait related but distinct from longevity d Healthy aging is associated with decreased genetic risk for select diseases d Healthy aging is potentially linked to protection against cognitive decline d Genome data are made available for further analysis Authors" }, { "document_id": "606c59c5-5ae4-47e9-b3eb-58afa55669d1", "section_type": "main", "text": "This population genetic\nmechanism also can maintain genetic variability for aging, like antagonistic pleiotropy.\n LARGE-EFFECT MUTANTS AND THE GENETICS OF AGING\n\nOne approach that has become increasingly common in the characterization of the genetics of aging is to isolate aging mutants, usually from mutagenesis experiments, and\nthen to determine the mechanistic basis for the unusual life span in the mutants. This\napproach has led to the discovery of genes that can enhance (e.g. , Maynard Smith 1958;\nLin et al. 1988; reviewed in Guarente and Kenyon 2000, Kim 2007) or reduce life span\n(e.g. , Pearl and Parker 1922)." }, { "document_id": "a440a3fa-74e7-4fd8-8a7f-d0391300d6ed", "section_type": "main", "text": "This population genetic\nmechanism also can maintain genetic variability for aging, like antagonistic pleiotropy.\n LARGE-EFFECT MUTANTS AND THE GENETICS OF AGING\n\nOne approach that has become increasingly common in the characterization of the genetics of aging is to isolate aging mutants, usually from mutagenesis experiments, and\nthen to determine the mechanistic basis for the unusual life span in the mutants. This\napproach has led to the discovery of genes that can enhance (e.g. , Maynard Smith 1958;\nLin et al. 1988; reviewed in Guarente and Kenyon 2000, Kim 2007) or reduce life span\n(e.g. , Pearl and Parker 1922)." }, { "document_id": "57e2d0f5-c5eb-4ba6-8101-5bacaed53cb4", "section_type": "main", "text": "\n\nIn conclusion, we performed a genome-wide association study of longevity-related phenotypes in individuals of European, East Asian and African American ancestry and identified the APOE and GPR78 loci to be associated with these phenotypes in our study.Moreover, our gene-level association analyses highlight a role for tissue-specific expression of genes at chromosome 5q13.3,12q13.2,17q21.31,and 19q13.32 in longevity.Genetic correlation analyses show that our longevity-related phenotypes are genetically correlated with several disease-related phenotypes, which in turn could help to identify phenotypes that could be used as potential biomarkers for longevity in future (genetic) studies." }, { "document_id": "b0e49b4c-954d-476a-ba3a-0215e63c98b6", "section_type": "main", "text": "\n\nGenes/loci identified by genome-wide association studies of longevity and lifespan traits." }, { "document_id": "932ef21b-9235-4210-a99c-6153a901bb89", "section_type": "main", "text": "\n\nSeveral explanations are possible for the lack of genomewide significant findings.First, mortality is arguably 1 of the most complex phenotypes, and several trajectories toward extreme old age have been identified (Evert et al., 2003).Multiple genes could mediate the aging process but would have their effects through numerous different patho-physiological processes and diseases that act as intermediate factors on the pathway to death (de Magalhaes et al., 2010).Therefore, any common variation in genes associated with aging probably has a small effect." }, { "document_id": "555a1533-2905-4d91-a3b6-2fca3679ab02", "section_type": "main", "text": "\n\nAging is an extremely complex process associated with interplay of genetic, biochemical, and metabolic factors in an organism in a given environment.Although genetic studies of various animal models suggest that even a single-gene mutation can remarkably extend lifespan (Kenyon 2005;Johnson 2006) and, thus, modulate aging, no such genes are revealed in humans so far.Given that a human organism is a much more complex system than a model organism (Christensen et al. 2006), it is evident that genetic effects on the aging process should be mediated via coordinate action of a large number of inter-related processes (Kirkwood 2011).Coordinated function is rather relevant to complex biological (Soltow et al. 2010;Slagboom et al. 2011) and genetic (Bloss et al. 2011) networks than to individual genes." }, { "document_id": "03a4f57c-3a11-4d3d-a1e9-6d0d8bdb7cb7", "section_type": "main", "text": "\n\nRecent developments on the genetics of aging can be seen as several streams of effort.In general, humans show a relatively modest (<50%) heritability of life spans (results obtained from twin studies discussed below).The apoE polymorphisms are remarkable for their influence on both cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer disease.In contrast, rare mutant genes with high penetrance cause these same diseases but with early onset and a major shortening of the life span.Shortlived laboratory models (fruit flies, nematodes, mice) are yielding rapid advances, with the discovery of mutants that increase life spans in association with altered metabolism, which leads to questions on the physiological organization of aging processes.Although these early findings do not show that a conserved genetic program actually controls aging processes across animal phylogeny, it is striking how frequently findings of metabolic rate, insulin signaling, and free radicals have emerged from very different approaches to aging in nematodes and mammals, for example.These findings hint that the genetic control of life span was already developed in the common ancestor of modern animals so that subsequent evolution of life spans was mediated by quantitative changes in the control of metabolism through insulin and the production of free radicals." }, { "document_id": "932ef21b-9235-4210-a99c-6153a901bb89", "section_type": "main", "text": "Introduction\n\nThe recent, remarkable extension of life expectancy is largely attributed to the postponement of mortality at old age (Vaupel, 1997(Vaupel, , 2010)).The years of life gained in the older population residing in developed nations are a success story of public health measures and improved health care.In addition to such external factors, longevity and healthy aging consistently show a modest heritability between 20% and 50% and aging-associated genetic research may provide further insights into the mechanisms of aging (Herskind et al., 1996;McGue et al., 1993;Reed and Dick, 2003).It has been postulated that genes involved in pathways associated with aging identified in animal models, such as insulin-like growth factor (IGF)-insulin signaling, regulation of lipoprotein metabolism, the mTOR pathway, and the oxidative stress response may also influence survival to old or even exceptionally old age in humans (Christensen et al., 2006;Kenyon, 2010;Vellai et al., 2003).However, in humans, common variants within genes involved in these pathways have not been consistently associated with lifespan (Chris-tensen et al., 2006;Kenyon, 2010;Kuningas et al., 2008;Vijg and Suh, 2005)." }, { "document_id": "a6bc2efd-61a7-4e07-ad5c-49234aa89431", "section_type": "main", "text": "\n\nIn 2021, Science published a special issue entitled \"125 Questions: Exploration and Discovery.\" One of these 125 questions was \"Can we stop ourselves from aging? \"The U.S. National Institute on Aging (NIA) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) states that \"aging is associated with changes in dynamic biological, physiological, environmental, psychological, behavioral, and social processes.\" Although geneticists and epidemiologists have long debated the relative importance of the role played by genotype or the environment in the development of age-related diseases, it is apparent that both can play substantial roles in this process [6,7].However, most etiological studies have concentrated on the role of genotype and have considered the environment to play a secondary role.Nevertheless, an analysis of GBD data showed that nearly 50% of deaths worldwide are attributable to environmental exposure, primarily exposure to airborne particulates (including household air pollution and occupational exposure; 14% of all deaths), smoking and secondhand smoke (13%), plasma sodium concentrations (6%), and alcohol consumption (5%) [8].In contrast, a recent analysis of 28 chronic diseases in identical twins showed that the genetic-related risks of developing one of five age-related diseases were 33.3%, 10.6%, 36.3%, 19.5%, and 33.9% for AD, PD, CAD, COPD, and T2DM, respectively, with a mean of only 26% [9].The results of over 400 genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have also elucidated that the heritability of degenerative diseases is only approximately 10% [10,11].Consequently, nongenetic drivers, such as environmental factors, are now recognized as major risk factors for age-related diseases.The contributions of environmental factors to the development of age-related diseases can be revealed by analyses of all of the factors to which individuals are exposed in their life and the relationships between these exposures and age-related diseases [12,13]." }, { "document_id": "f4e2fa75-559b-4fa9-b722-bdac03f7715a", "section_type": "main", "text": "\n\nI NCREASES in longevity of the general population world- wide are an unprecedented phenomenon with significant health and social impact.Although environmental factors have led to an increase in life span, there is ample evidence that genetic factors are involved in extreme longevity both in humans (1-7) and in other organisms (8).The protective genetic factors that lead to longevity are likely to involve fundamental processes of aging that may be different from those associated with early mortality or premature onset of age-related diseases in younger individuals.The mechanisms of aging in humans are far from understood, but available evidence suggests that several pathways-inflammation, oxidative stress and stress responses, cellular senescence, DNA damage and repair, and the growth hormone or insulinlike growth factor and insulin (GH, IGF, INS) axis-may play key roles (9)(10)(11)(12).Model organisms suggest that inhibiting the GH, IGF, or INS axis, which is involved in regulating cell proliferation, cell death, wound repair, and metabolism, may promote longevity by reducing oxidative stress and slowing the rate of cell replication and the accumulation of somatic-cell DNA mutations (13).There is also evidence for other important pathways such as the heatshock proteins and heat-shock factors that are highly conserved across species and play a role in prolongevity transcription pathways.Clinical and epidemiological investigations, including candidate gene studies, have suggested that inflammation pathways may affect life span and risk of age-related conditions such as cardiovascular disease (CVD) and its risk factors (14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19).A combination of multiple genetic variants may be required for an individual to achieve exceptional longevity, which may account in part for its rarity." }, { "document_id": "db90a971-e55a-4ab0-a3b1-05908d6771a4", "section_type": "main", "text": "Introduction\n\nApproximately 25-30% of the variation in adult lifespan is attributable to genetic factors that become more important with increasing age and exert their strongest effects in nonagenarians and centenarians (Go ¨gele et al., 2010;Hjelmborg et al., 2006).As yet, however, only a few genetic variants have been found consistently to influence longevity.The first to be discovered was the e4 allele of the apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene, a mortality factor that predisposes to both Alzheimer's and cardiovascular diseases (Corder et al., 1993; Panza et al., 2004).APOE e4 is the only variant with a reportedly large adverse effect upon survival at advanced age (Scha ¨chter et al., 1994), and this association has been replicated in several populations (Christensen et al., 2006).Variation in the human forkhead box O3A gene (FOXO3A), in contrast, has been found to be associated with the ability to live long, an effect corroborated by studies in Japanese, German, Italian, US-American, Jewish, Chinese and Danish populations (Anselmi et al., 2009;Flachsbart et al., 2009;Li et al., 2009;Pawlikowska et al., 2009;Soerensen et al., 2010;Willcox et al., 2008).More recently, we have identified exonuclease 1 (EXO1) as a potential novel longevity gene (Nebel et al., 2009).All three genes were detected through candidate-gene approaches." } ], "document_id": "22C4FE902B2E9A047267A56F6096B4C6", "engine": "gpt-4", "first_load": false, "focus": "api", "keywords": [ "APOE", "FOXO3A", "longevity", "aging", "genetic", "SNPs", "DNA&methylation", "epigenetic&clock", "GWAS", "chromosome&5q33.3" ], "metadata": [ { "object": "APOE genotype status moderated the age-related declines in episodic memory: APOE-epsilon4+ middle-aged adults exhibited impairments relative to both APOE-epsilon4- middle-aged participants, and APOE-epsilon4+ younger adults.", "predicate": "http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#comment", "subject": "ndd791caee50643ad90a986f563d2a0dab77520" }, { "object": "Data suggest that the redox status of serum apoE might be related to the synthesis of HDL; the cysteine-thiol residue of reduced-apoE is in a naive state, while that of non-reduced-apoE is in a reversibly or irreversibly oxidized state. Data suggest that apoE homodimer and apoE-AII complex are typical reversibly oxidized forms of apoE. apoE-AII complex = a complex of apolipoprotein E and apolipoprotein A-II", "predicate": "http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#comment", "subject": "ndd791caee50643ad90a986f563d2a0dab212832" }, { "object": "Low apoE and mir-650 plasma concentrations were risk factors for developing Alzheimer's disease AD and were particularly pronounced in severe dementia. APOE E4 allele in both AD patients and controls led to a reduction in apoE, while APOE E3/E3 genotype was associated with an increased apoE concentration and level of miR-107 in AD, which inversely correlated with the number of APOE E4 alleles.", "predicate": "http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#comment", "subject": "ndd791caee50643ad90a986f563d2a0dab459467" }, { "object": "study investigated DNA methylation of the imprinted IGF2/H19 locus; data suggest aging more than population genetics is responsible for the inter-individual variability in DNA methylation patterns; DNA methylation variability appears to be highly region-specific", "predicate": "http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#comment", "subject": "ndd791caee50643ad90a986f563d2a0dab744889" }, { "object": "BDNF mRNA expression and DNA methylation of seven CpG sites were not associated with schizophrenia after accounting for age and PMI effects. BDNF mRNA expression and DNA methylation were not altered by Val66Met after accounting for age and PMI effects. Schizophrenia risk was not associated with differential BDNF mRNA expression and DNA methylation.", "predicate": "http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#comment", "subject": "ndd791caee50643ad90a986f563d2a0dab97590" }, { "object": "the minimum alleles of rs10895322, rs1784424, rs3781788, and rs1573954 correlated with an increased risk of alcohol-induced ONFH P<0.05. Genetic model analysis revealed significant associations of 9 SNPs with alcohol-induced ONFH occurrence after adjustment for age P<0.05: 2 protective SNPs rs1711423 and rs1784418 and 7 high-risk SNPs rs10895322, rs1784424, rs3781788, rs7126560, rs1573954, rs1711399, rs2292730.", "predicate": "http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#comment", "subject": "ndd791caee50643ad90a986f563d2a0dab834824" }, { "object": "1443823_s_at: short probe set - potential SNPs could affect mapping result; 1427465_at: 3 SNPs in target area affect the hybridization of 5 probes; 1434893_at: 6 SNPs in target area could affect the hybridization of 7 probes; 1455136_at generate true cisQTL even 3 SNPs in target area affect mapping accuracy of 4 probes - BUT probes without any SNPs reveal the presence of an eQTL.", "predicate": "http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#comment", "subject": "ndd791caee50643ad90a986f563d2a0dab43" }, { "object": "These findings indicate that maternal apo B levels are significantly associated with apo B levels in their pre-school age children, adjusted for confounding variables. Furthermore, the mother-child correlations in apo B levels were independent of mother-child adiposity. Measurement of apo B levels in mothers may identify both high-risk children and mothers who may benefit from intervention.", "predicate": "http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#comment", "subject": "ndd791caee50643ad90a986f563d2a0dab902074" }, { "object": "Study of genetic risk of prevalent hrHPV infections in Nigerian women found significant associations with SNPs on ribosomal protein gene S19 RPS19 and Thymidylate Synthase gene TYMS, in an allelic model. This risk remained significant, after adjusting for age, body mass index, smoking, age at menarche, age at sexual debut, lifetime total number of sexual partners and the total number of pregnancies.", "predicate": "http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#comment", "subject": "ndd791caee50643ad90a986f563d2a0dab745428" }, { "object": "Study surveyed the non-synonymous SNPs of DNASE1L2: 19 SNPs originating from frameshift/nonsense mutations found in DNASE1L2 resulted in loss of function of the enzyme. Thus, the present findings suggest that each of the minor alleles for these SNPs may serve as one of genetic risk factors for parakeratotic skin diseases such as psoriasis, even though they lack a worldwide genetic distribution.", "predicate": "http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#comment", "subject": "ndd791caee50643ad90a986f563d2a0dab752673" } ], "question": "what genetic factor are associated with aging", "subquestions": null, "task_id": "22C4FE902B2E9A047267A56F6096B4C6", "usage": { "chatgpt": 8077, "gpt-4": 5976, "gpt-4-turbo-preview": 5057 }, "user_id": 2 }, "document_id": "22C4FE902B2E9A047267A56F6096B4C6", "task_id": "22C4FE902B2E9A047267A56F6096B4C6" }