Differential Gene Expression Analysis of Whole Blood Transcriptome Between Young and Old Border Collie Dogs
Modern societies are characterized by an aging population, leading to an increase in the number of occurrences of age-related diseases in the general population. Therefore, it is of cardinal importance to study aging and the background of aging from a genetic point of view as well as to study the environmental risk factors of these diseases. Healthy aging is of special relevance, because its deeper understanding enables us to promote lifestyles leading to healthier old age. Consequently, we can contribute to preventing or delaying the manifestation of age-related diseases.
In their recently published article, scientists from Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) studied healthy aging in dogs. This species has multiple advantages, which make them ideal for the study of aging. For example, unlike laboratory model organisms, companion dogs live with their owners and very similar environmental factors affect them during their life that affect their owners. Furthermore, several age-related diseases exist in dogs, that are very similar to certain human counterparts; for example, canine cognitive dysfunction is similar in many aspects to human Alzheimer’s disease. In their research, the scientists aimed to identify genes from the dogs’ blood that could later become biomarkers of healthy aging.
The researchers analyzed the blood samples of ten border collie dogs (five young adult and five elderly adult dogs). They extracted the protein coding RNA molecules – which have a key role in the expression of genes – and identified the sequences coded by these molecules. “Dogs have approximately 20 thousand protein coding genes. From the obtained genetic data, we could identify which genes were expressed in the examined dogs’ blood using bioinformatic tools. Furthermore, we also obtained quantitative information about these genes, which allowed us to accurately measure the expression levels of these genes as well, which in turn enabled us to compare our young adult and elderly adult samples.” said Dávid Jónás bioinformatician, one of the first authors of the published manuscript. The scientists identified a total of 61 genes, which were expressed at different levels in the two age groups, while the remaining ~13 thousand genes – or about 99,6% of all expressed genes in blood – had similar expression levels in all examined animals. These results are supported by another, recently published independent study conducted on Belgian malinois dogs. “Since our results are overlapping to a very large extent with the aforementioned other study, these identified genes are good candidates for biomarkers of healthy aging in dogs.” said Kitti Tátrai pre-doctor, the other primary author of the manuscript. The next step will be to study these genes’ relationship with aging.
Original article: Jónás D, Tátrai K, Rékasi Z, Egyed B, Kubinyi E. Differential Gene Expression Analysis of Whole Blood Transcriptome Between Young and Old Border Collie Dogs. Veterinary Sciences. 2025; 12(2):86. https://doi.org/10.3390/vetsci12020086
Contact: Dávid, Jónás; jonas.david@ttk.elte.hu
PR work was funded by MEC_N 149124.
