The mammalian circadian clock strongly influences when and to what extent certain genes are transcribed in each tissue throughout the day. A new study, published today (February 2) in Science, shows that this daily schedule of gene expression depends partially on a person’s sex and age. Specifically, the team found that women have more genes with rhythmicity compared to men, and that these rhythms break down as people age.
To study circadian gene expression in human tissues, the team used postmortem RNA quantification and sequencing data from 914 donors, stored in the Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) catalog. They developed an algorithm to calculate the reference circadian phase for each donor, that is, the internal clock state in the skeletal muscle following death. They used to their advantage the fact that they had data from typically 10 to 20 tissues per donor, and that the internal times of these tissues were correlated ...
