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Prediction of biological age by morphological staging of sarcopenia in Caenorhabditis elegans
Sarcopenia encompasses a progressive decline in muscle quantity and quality. Given its close association with ageing, it may represent a valuable healthspan marker. The commonalities with human muscle structure and facile visualization possibilities make Caenorhabditis elegans an attractive model fo...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
The Company of Biologists Ltd
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8649172/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34723324 http://dx.doi.org/10.1242/dmm.049169 |
Sumario: | Sarcopenia encompasses a progressive decline in muscle quantity and quality. Given its close association with ageing, it may represent a valuable healthspan marker. The commonalities with human muscle structure and facile visualization possibilities make Caenorhabditis elegans an attractive model for studying the relationship between sarcopenia and healthspan. However, classical visual assessment of muscle architecture is subjective and has low throughput. To resolve this, we have developed an image analysis pipeline for the quantification of muscle integrity in confocal microscopy images from a cohort of ageing myosin::GFP reporter worms. We extracted a variety of morphological descriptors and found a subset to scale linearly with age. This allowed establishing a linear model that predicts biological age from a morphological muscle signature. To validate the model, we evaluated muscle architecture in long-lived worms that are known to experience delayed sarcopenia by targeted knockdown of the daf-2 gene. We conclude that quantitative microscopy allows for staging sarcopenia in C. elegans and may foster the development of image-based screens in this model organism to identify modulators that mitigate age-related muscle frailty and thus improve healthspan. |
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