Large-scale transcriptomic data across four mammalian species and multiple tissues identify conserved molecular signatures associated with ageing and mortality risk.
The integration across species, tissues, perturbations, and interventions is a notable strength. Further, mRNA abundance is more biologically interpretable than DNA methylation, though still an indirect readout of physiological processes.
The article advances the idea that ageing is multidimensional rather than a single scalar process, with partially separable inflammatory, metabolic, extracellular matrix, and stress-response programs changing over time.
Predictive performance is strong, but it is important to distinguish predictive association from mechanistic understanding. Even sophisticated transcriptomic signatures primarily capture statistical dependencies and correlations with ageing-related states and mortality risk. They do not yet explain the causal mechanisms underlying ageing.
Achieving deeper mechanistic understanding will require more functional readouts: protein states and modifications, molecular interactions, metabolic fluxes, cell functions, tissue physiology, and experimentally testable causal perturbations.
This work provides a valuable cross-species resource and advances the field through its scale, comparative framework, and integrative systems biology perspective.