Horses are one of the longest-living species of farm animals. Advanced age is often associated with a decrease in body condition, dysfunction of immune system, and late-onset disorders. Due to this, the search for new solutions in the prevention and treatment of pathological conditions of the advanced age of horses is desirable. That is why the identification of aging-related changes in the horse genome is interesting in this respect. In the recent years, the research on aging includes studies of age-related epigenetic effects observed on the DNA methylation level. We applied reduced representation bisulfite sequencing (RRBS) to uncover a range of age DMR sites in genomes of blood leukocytes derived from juvenile and aged horses of native Hucul breed. Genes colocated with age-related differentially methylated regions (age DMRs) are the members of pathways involved in cellular signal transduction, immune response, neurogenesis, differentiation, development, and cancer progression. A positive correlation was found between methylation states and gene expression in particular loci from our data set. Some of described age DMR-linked genes were also reported elsewhere. Obtained results contribute to the knowledge about the molecular basis of aging of equine blood cells.

中文翻译：

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年龄不同的天然Hucul母马血白细胞的甲基化标记。

马是生活时间最长的农场动物之一。高龄通常与身体状况下降，免疫系统功能障碍和迟发性疾病有关。因此，期望寻找新的解决方案以预防和治疗马的高龄病理状况。这就是为什么在此方面对马基因组中与衰老相关的变化进行识别的原因。近年来，关于衰老的研究包括对DNA甲基化水平观察到的与年龄相关的表观遗传效应的研究。我们应用了简化表示的亚硫酸氢盐测序（RRBS），以发现来自天然Hucul品种的幼马和老马的血白细胞基因组中的一系列DMR年龄位点。与年龄相关的差异甲基化区域（年龄DMR）共置的基因是参与细胞信号转导，免疫应答，神经发生，分化，发展和癌症进展的途径的成员。从我们的数据集中发现甲基化状态与基因表达特别是基因座之间呈正相关。一些描述的年龄DMR相关基因也已在其他地方报道。获得的结果有助于了解有关马血细胞衰老的分子基础。