Researchers profiled 30 tissues from 17 aging female rhesus macaques using transcriptome, proteome, and metabolome data to create a comprehensive molecular aging atlas. They found that while inflammation consistently increases across all tissues with age — mirroring findings in mice and humans — tissues do not age at the same rate or in the same way. Two distinct aging types were identified, with one type showing more pronounced aging linked to reduced mRNA translation efficiency. This more severely aging tissue group appears to drive whole-body aging disproportionately. Because rhesus macaques are evolutionarily close to humans and tissue sampling in people is difficult, this dataset offers an invaluable proxy for understanding human tissue aging at a molecular level.
