Speaker
Description
For more than four decades, the nematode C. elegans has served as a key model organism in aging research, particularly at the cellular and molecular level. Recently single-cell time series studies have shown that different types of cells age at different rates and through distinct regulatory mechanisms. Using that published data, we identified transcription factors that are co-expressed in the same cells and constructed cell-specific models. The models were built using so-called minimal sets and are represented as directed graphs. The original goal was to identify a universal regulatory subnetwork conserved across multiple cell types, that when augmented within a specific type of cell would give rise to cell-specific behavior. Instead our work revealed similar motifs across cell types: we observed coordinated regulatory pairs, although the specific transcription factors involved vary by cell type. This suggests that aging regulation in C. elegans may be organized not around a single conserved subnetwork, but around motifs differentiated by cell type. We discuss how these motifs may contribute to robustness and maintenance of cellular dynamics during aging.
