Congratulations to Minxue Jia, Khaled Sayed, and Maria Kapetanaki for the acceptance of their joint first author Aging Cell paper, which is entitled “LEF1 isoforms regulate cellular senescence and aging“.
In this paper, our group analyzed scRNA-seq data from immune cells from human and mouse lungs (young and aged) and bulk RNA-seq data from human blood samples from healthy controls (also young and aged). We found that at the level of gene expression, there is not much conservation between species and organs. However, at the level of transcription factor activity, we identified LEF1 as the a key regulator of aging and cellular senescence. Subsequent experiments by Drs Bokai Zhu, Univ of Pittsburgh, and Mauricio Rojas, The University of Ohio showed that expression of LEF1 alternative transcripts controls cellular senescence and reduction in full length LEF1 protein is associated with IPF.
Congratulations Minxue, Khaled, Maria!
Paper availability: [journal web site] [bioRxiv]