Wolfgang Wagner: Life-long and aging related modifications of the epigenetic landscape

Aging is reflected by genome-wide DNA methylation changes, which form the basis of epigenetic clocks, but it is largely unclear how these epigenetic modifications are regulated, and if they directly affect the aging process. Prof. Wagner will present new approaches for epigenetic aging signatures based on weighted 2D kernel density estimation, which may also provide a new measure of biological age. Furthermore, they performed epigenetic editing at age-associated CpG-sites to explore the consequences of interfering with epigenetic clocks. CRISPR-guided editing targeted at individual age-related CpGs evoked genome-wide bystander effects, which were highly reproducible and enriched at other age-associated regions. Notably, these effects were simultaneously observed at CpGs that gain and lose methylation with age. These results demonstrate that epigenetic editing can extensively modulate the epigenetic aging network and interfere with epigenetic clocks. Furthermore, he will present integration of age-associated genome wide DNA methylation changes in WGBS data of blood with histone modifications and chromatin accessibility. Finally, he will discuss the philosophical question of why we age, and that the stochastic and directed components of epigenetic networks might drive an evolutionary purposeful aging process. Speaker: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Wagner (RWTH Aachen University Medical School, Institute for Stem Cell Biology) Weniger lesen