cginess_and_aging

Cellular aging is characterized by disruption of the nuclear lamina and its associated heterochromatin. How these structural changes within the nucleus contribute to age-related degeneration of the organism is unclear. Genes lacking CpG islands (CGI- genes) associate with nuclear lamina-associated heterochromatin when they are inactive. Here, we show that the expression of these genes is globally activated in aged cells and tissues. This CGI- gene misexpression is a common feature of normal and pathological aging in mice and humans. We report evidence that CGI- gene upregulation is directly responsible for age-related physiological deterioration, notably for increased secretion of inflammatory mediators. These files are uncropped western blot images and unprocessed confocal microscopy images for this study. Each directory indicates a panel of the processed figures shown in the paper. Minimal image processing was applied prior to image analysis. For microscopy, brightness and contrast were adjusted identically for compared image sets, and signal intensity was quantified using ImageJ Fiji 1.53c. See the paper for more details.