Summary
This study leveraged data from the GTEx project to map tissue-specific circadian gene expression rhythms across 914 human donors, integrating multi-tissue temporal information to assign circadian phases. Whilst the fundamental clock structure remained conserved across sexes and age groups, overall rhythmic gene expression programmes showed pronounced sexual dimorphism—with females exhibiting more sustained rhythms—and a general dampening of rhythmic organisation with age. These findings provide a comprehensive human reference for understanding how sex and age modulate circadian regulation of metabolism and systemic physiology.
UK applicability
These findings may inform UK personalised medicine and nutritional science approaches by highlighting the need to account for sex and age in understanding circadian regulation of metabolic pathways. However, direct application to farming systems or agricultural nutrition would require downstream research linking these circadian patterns to nutrient absorption, dietary timing, and health outcomes.
Key measures
Circadian phase assignments for 914 donors; mRNA rhythm identification across 46 tissues; sex-dimorphic and age-dependent patterns in gene expression; temporal organisation of clock transcripts
Outcomes reported
The study identified messenger RNA rhythms across 46 human tissues in 914 donors and characterised how circadian gene expression varies by sex and age. Gene expression rhythms were found to be highly sex-dimorphic with more sustained oscillations in females, and generally dampened with advancing age across tissues.
Topic tags
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