Publications [#220017] of Jenny Tung

Papers Submitted

1. N.M. Snyder-Mackler, M. Somel, J. Tung, Shared signatures of social stress and aging in PBMC gene expression profiles. (2013)
   (last updated on 2013/12/05)

   Abstract:
   Chronic social stress is a predictor of aging-related disease and death. Hence, chronic stress has been suggested to exacerbate the process of physiological aging. Here we tested this possibility by comparing two data sets on genome-wide gene expression levels in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), one of which captured aging effects on gene expression and the other which focused on chronic social stress. We found that, as predicted, increased chronic social stress and older age changed gene expression levels in similar directions among genes that were independently and significantly correlated with both variables. Further, both social stress and age influenced overlapping functional categories of genes. However, gene-specific parallels were difficult to identify, in part due to age- and social stress-related changes in PBMC composition, which limit comparisons in this heterogeneous tissue type. Thus, although aging and social stress do appear to lead to broadly similar patterns of gene expression, cell type-specific data will be important for identifying many of the individual biomarkers associated with both processes.