What if a cell’s age could be measured not by the number of years we have lived, but by what is happening inside the cell?
Researchers from Karolinska Institutet and Stockholm University have developed a new tool called Pasta that estimates the biological age of cells by analysing gene activity. It looks at which genes are switched on or off to understand how “old” a cell behaves.
To build Pasta, researchers analysed gene activity data from more than 17,000 healthy tissue samples across 21 datasets. The tool was designed to work across different tissues and data types, making it more versatile than many earlier biological-age measuresIt can distinguish between younger, stem-like cells and older senescent cells. Cells with higher biological-age scores showed greater activity in pathways linked to DNA damage and cellular stress, including the p53 pathway.
The researchers then applied Pasta to more than three million gene-expression profiles from a large public database. This allowed them to investigate thousands of drugs and genetic changes and identify substances and biological pathways that may influence cellular ageing.
The potential significance is much bigger than simply knowing how old a cell appears. Understanding biological ageing could help researchers study age-related diseases, cancer, regenerative medicine and therapies aimed at modifying ageing processes. Pasta may provide another way to explore these questions at the cellular level.
However, this is still a research tool, not a clinical test that can tell a person their biological age or predict how long they will live. More research is needed before findings from cellular ageing models can translate into routine healthcare.
If we can measure how quickly cells age, could the next frontier of medicine be slowing or reversing that process?
MBH/PS