Effect of age, calorie restriction and resveratrol on gene expression in mouse heart, brain, and skeletal muscle. Mus musculus

Resveratrol in high doses has been shown to extend lifespan in some studies in invertebrates and to prevent early mortality in mice fed a high-fat diet. We fed mice from middle age (14-months) to old age (30-months) either a control diet, a low dose of resveratrol (4.9 mg kg-1 day-1), or a calorie restricted (CR) diet and examined genome-wide transcriptional profiles. We report a striking transcriptional overlap of CR and resveratrol in heart, skeletal muscle and brain. Both dietary interventions inhibit gene expression profiles associated with cardiac and skeletal muscle aging. Gene expression profiling suggests that both CR and resveratrol may retard some aspects of aging through alterations in chromatin structure and transcription. Resveratrol, at doses that can be readily achieved in humans, fulfills the definition of a dietary compound that mimics some aspects of CR. Keywords: aging intervention study Overall design: Heart, neocortex tissue, and gastrocnemius muscle was collected from young and old mice at 5 and 30 months of age, respectively; mice were subjected to either a calorie restricted diet or a control diet supplemented with resveratrol