Live·Open questions in longevity research
Research perspectives

Research directions

Big data on ageing

Extract answers from open data. Cell atlases let us select a tissue, cell type and gene, compare groups and identify a pattern to test.

A field of cellular specimens forms a tissue atlas, printed in black with one red accent.
Conceptual illustration

What can be extracted from the data

Ageing and lifespan

  • Open Genes

    Ageing genes and the experiments in which changing their activity altered lifespan or age-related traits.

  • GenAge

    Genes linked to human ageing and genes that change lifespan in model organisms.

  • AnAge

    Maximum lifespan, body mass and age at maturity for more than 4,000 animal species.

  • DrugAge

    Compounds that extended lifespan in model organisms, with dose, species and effect size.

  • GenDR

    Genes on which lifespan extension by dietary restriction depends.

  • CellAge

    Genes that drive or inhibit cellular senescence.

  • LongevityMap

    Genetic variants tested for association with human longevity, negative results included.

  • SynergyAge

    Lifespan of model organisms under combinations of genetic interventions.

  • Aging Atlas

    Gene activity, epigenetic and protein data on ageing collected from many studies.

  • Interventions Testing Program

    Compounds tested for lifespan effects in genetically diverse mice at three sites in parallel.

  • Mouse Phenome Database

    Lifespan and traits of mouse strains, including raw Interventions Testing Program data.

  • ClockBase

    Biological age of human and mouse samples from public DNA methylation data, computed with many epigenetic clocks.

  • Human Mortality Database

    Mortality and life expectancy by country, year, sex and age.

  • International Database on Longevity

    Validated ages of people who lived to 105, 110 and beyond.

Cells, tissues and molecules

  • Tabula Muris Senis

    Single-cell gene activity in 23 mouse tissues and organs at ages from 1 to 30 months.

  • Tabula Sapiens

    Cell-type atlas of many organs sampled from the same donors.

  • Human Cell Atlas

    Single-cell data on human tissues from the international consortium's projects.

  • CZ CELLxGENE Discover

    Standardised single-cell datasets for comparing a gene across tissues, cell types and donor groups.

  • GTEx

    Gene activity in 54 tissues from nearly 1,000 donors aged 20 to 79, and the genetic variants that change it.

  • Human Protein Atlas

    Where each human protein is found across tissues, cells and subcellular structures.

  • GEO

    Archive of gene-activity and epigenetic experiments, including many young-versus-old comparisons.

  • ArrayExpress

    European archive of functional genomics experiments with sample descriptions.

  • SRA

    Raw sequencing reads for reprocessing.

  • PRIDE

    Raw data from proteomics experiments.

  • MetaboLights

    Raw data from metabolomics experiments.

  • HMDB

    Human metabolites and their concentrations in blood, urine and tissues.

Human genomes and cohorts

  • UK Biobank

    Genomes, blood tests, plasma proteins, imaging and health records of 500,000 people, by application.

  • NHANES

    Examinations and lab tests of US residents linked to mortality records; the PhenoAge clock was trained on them.

  • Health and Retirement Study

    Long-term follow-up of health, income and cognition in Americans over 50, including DNA methylation.

  • Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging

    Repeated examinations of the same people since 1958, by application.

  • All of Us

    Genomes, health records and wearable data from hundreds of thousands of US residents.

  • FinnGen

    Associations of genetic variants with thousands of diagnoses in Finland; summary results are open.

  • GWAS Catalog

    Published associations of genetic variants with traits, including lifespan and parental longevity.

  • gnomAD

    Variant frequencies across hundreds of thousands of people and how well each gene tolerates loss of function.

  • ClinVar

    Clinical significance of human genetic variants.

  • dbGaP

    Individual-level data from large cohorts such as the Framingham Heart Study, by application.

Proteins, structures and pathways

  • UniProt

    Protein functions, domains, modifications and variants.

  • AlphaFold DB

    Predicted structures of more than 200 million proteins.

  • RCSB PDB

    Experimentally determined structures of proteins and their complexes with small molecules.

  • STRING

    Known and predicted protein interactions.

  • Reactome

    Human signalling and metabolic pathways, reaction by reaction.

  • KEGG

    Metabolic and signalling pathway maps across many organisms.

  • Gene Ontology

    Gene functions in a shared vocabulary for enrichment analysis.

Compounds, drugs and trials

  • ChEMBL

    Measured activity of millions of compounds against protein targets.

  • DrugBank

    Approved and experimental drugs with their targets, metabolism and interactions.

  • PubChem

    Chemical compounds, their properties and biological screening results.

  • Connectivity Map (LINCS)

    Gene-activity changes in cells exposed to thousands of compounds; used to find compounds that shift cells towards a younger profile.

  • Open Targets

    Evidence linking targets to diseases from genetics, experiments and literature.

  • FAERS

    Adverse drug event reports submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration.

  • ClinicalTrials.gov

    Registered clinical trials with design, status and results.

  • WHO ICTRP

    Trials from national registries worldwide in one World Health Organization search.

Model organisms and species comparison

  • WormBase

    Genes, mutants and phenotypes of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, including lifespan.

  • FlyBase

    Genes, strains and phenotypes of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.

  • MGI

    Mouse genes and phenotypes of knockout lines.

  • SGD

    Genes and phenotypes of baker's yeast, including replicative lifespan.

  • Ensembl

    Vertebrate genomes and gene correspondences across species for comparing long- and short-lived animals.

Publications, grants and patents

  • PubMed

    Abstracts and records of more than 37 million biomedical publications.

  • PubMed Central

    Full texts of open-access articles.

  • Europe PMC

    Full texts and preprints with genes, diseases and compounds tagged automatically.

  • bioRxiv

    Biology preprints before peer review.

  • medRxiv

    Medical and clinical preprints before peer review.

  • OpenAlex

    Links between papers, authors, institutions, citations and funders.

  • NIH RePORTER

    Projects funded by the US National Institutes of Health, with amounts, investigators and publications.

  • The Lens

    Patents and scholarly articles with the links between them.

From a cell atlas to a research answer

Research can begin with data already collected. Cell atlases describe the cells in a tissue and the genes they express. Selecting age, tissue and cell type can test a hypothesis, reveal an unusual cell population or suggest an experimental target. The database brings together atlases with their uses, limitations and links to original measurements.

Evidence to build on

Tabula Muris Senis profiled more than 350,000 cells from 23 mouse tissues and organs across age groups. The atlas helps distinguish changes within a cell type from shifts in the proportions of cell types. Those two processes can look similar in measurements averaged over an entire tissue.

What remains unresolved

A large number of cells can come from a small number of animals. Apparent precision at the cell level therefore needs checks at the level of independent organisms, and transfer to humans requires its own validation.

The next useful experiment

Choose an age-associated signal in an open atlas, reproduce it in a separate dataset and test whether changing the implicated process alters tissue function.

Proposed experiments

The wider strategy

The presentation links progress to cheaper measurements, automation and reusable biological data. This approach asks how those resources can produce reliable, testable knowledge.

The Death-Fighting Spectrum presentation