Systematic mapping of organism-scale gene-regulatory networks in aging using population asynchrony

We present Asynch-Seq, a method that uses natural inter-individual heterogeneity to map organismal networks. Collecting single-individual transcriptomes from large populations, we capture the wild-type Caenorhabditis elegans "pan-transcriptome" - a highly-resolved atlas of non-genetic, inter-individual heterogeneity. Multi-scale modelling and systematic perturbation experiments reveal that tissue-compositional differences are the single largest driver of individual outcomes in aging.