Deciphering aging at three-dimensional genomic resolution
Zunpeng Liu, Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte, Weiqi Zhang, Jing Qu, Guang‐Hui Liu
Abstract
Aging is characterized by progressive functional declines at the organismal, organic, and cellular levels and increased susceptibility to aging-related diseases. Epigenetic alteration is a hallmark of aging, senescent cells show epigenomic changes at multiple scales, such as 3D genome reorganization, alterations of histone modifications and chromatin accessibility, and DNA hypomethylation. Chromosome conformation capture (3C)-based technologies have enabled the generation of key information on genomic reorganizations during senescence. A comprehensive understanding of epigenomic alterations during aging will yield important insights into the underlying epigenetic mechanism for aging regulation, the identification of aging-related biomarkers, and the development of potential aging intervention targets.