Description
Aging improves pancreatic ß-cell function in mice. This is a surprising finding since aging is typically associated with functional decline. We performed single-cell RNA sequencing of ß-cells from 3 and 26 month old mice to explore how changes in gene expression contribute to improved function with age. The old mice were healthy, had reduced blood glucose levels and increased ß-cell mass, which correlated to their body weight. ß-cells from young and old mice had similar transcriptome profiles. In fact, only 193 genes (0.89% of all detected genes) were significantly regulated (= 2-fold; false discovery rate < 0.01; normalized counts > 5). Of these, 183 were downregulated and mainly associated with pathways regulating gene expression, cell cycle, cell death and survival as well as cellular movement, function and maintenance. Collectively, our data show that ß-cells from very old mice have transcriptome profiles similar to those of young mice. These data support previous findings that aging is not associated with reduced ß-cell mass or functional ß-cell decline in mice. Overall design: Single-cell RNA sequencing of mouse pancreatic islet beta cells