Abstract
Studying aging is important to further understand the molecular mechanisms underlying this physiological process and, ideally, to identify a panel of aging biomarkers. Animals, in particular mice, are often used in aging studies, since they mimic important features of human aging, age quickly, and are easy to manipulate. The present work describes the use of Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy to identify an age-related spectroscopic profile of the cardiac and skeletal muscle tissues of C57BL/6J female mice. We acquired ATR-FTIR spectra of cardiac and skeletal muscle at four different ages: 6; 12; 17 and 24 months (10 samples at each age) and analyzed the data using multivariate statistical tools (PCA and PLS) and peak intensity analyses. The results suggest deep changes in protein secondary structure in 24-month-old mice compared to both tissues in 6-month-old mice. Oligomeric structures decreased with age in both tissues, while intermolecular β-sheet structures increased with aging in cardiac muscle but not in skeletal muscle. Despite FTIR spectroscopy being unable to identify the proteins responsible for these conformational changes, this study gives insights into the potential of FTIR to monitor the aging process and identify an age-specific spectroscopic signature.
Highlights
Aging studies are of great importance to elucidate this complex process, to detect and prevent age-related diseases, and to develop anti-aging therapies
To evaluate the spectroscopic profile of muscle tissue during aging, samples of skeletal and cardiac muscle of C57BL/6J female mice at 6, 12, 17 and 24 months of age were subjected to Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy
Area normalization of the FTIR spectra was performed to ensure that differences in the amount of sample placed in the ATR crystal would not be the cause of spectral differences between samples
Summary
Aging studies are of great importance to elucidate this complex process, to detect and prevent age-related diseases, and to develop anti-aging therapies. Aging studies are mostly performed using different models, either computational models, cell cultures or animal models Both in vitro and in vivo studies are widely used in aging research, using both cell and animal models [1,2]. It is possible to correlate mice age to human age [3], making it easier to translate research results. Despite all these advantages, mice do not appear to develop some of the most common age-related diseases, such as diabetes and atherosclerosis, so one needs to be careful when using this model to study aging and age-related diseases [3,4,5,6]
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