Heritability of Gene Expression Measured from Peripheral Blood in Older Adults
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(Published version)
Date
2024
Authors
Kanchibhotla, S.C.
Mather, K.A.
Armstrong, N.J.
Ciobanu, L.G.
Baune, B.T.
Catts, V.S.
Schofield, P.R.
Trollor, J.N.
Ames, D.
Sachdev, P.S.
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Journal article
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Genes, 2024; 15(4):495-1-495-13
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Sri C. Kanchibhotla, Karen A. Mather, Nicola J. Armstrong, Liliana G. Ciobanu, Bernhard T. Baune, Vibeke S. Catts, Peter R. Schofield, Julian N. Trollor, David Ames, Perminder S. Sachdev and Anbupalam Thalamuthu
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Abstract
The contributions of genetic variation and the environment to gene expression may change across the lifespan. However, few studies have investigated the heritability of blood gene expression in older adults. The current study therefore aimed to investigate this question in a community sample of older adults. A total of 246 adults (71 MZ and 52 DZ twins, 69.91% females; mean age-75.79 ± 5.44) were studied. Peripheral blood gene expression was assessed using Illumina microarrays. A heritability analysis was performed using structural equation modelling. There were 5269 probes (19.9%) from 4603 unique genes (23.9%) (total 26,537 probes from 19,256 genes) that were significantly heritable (mean h² = 0.40). A pathway analysis of the top 10% of significant genes showed enrichment for the immune response and ageing-associated genes. In a comparison with two other gene expression twin heritability studies using adults from across the lifespan, there were 38 out of 9479 overlapping genes that were significantly heritable. In conclusion, our study found ~24% of the available genes for analysis were heritable in older adults, with only a small number common across studies that used samples from across adulthood, indicating the importance of examining gene expression in older age groups.
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© 2024 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).
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http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/401162
http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/1024224
http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/1025243
http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/1045325
http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/1085606
http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/1060524
http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/568969
http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/1093083
http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/1024224
http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/1025243
http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/1045325
http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/1085606
http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/1060524
http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/568969
http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/1093083