Sequencing of cfDNA derived from the plasma of individuals of different ages

We provide the first in vivo evidence of global and local chromatin changes in human aging by analyzing cfDNA from the blood of individuals of different age groups. Our results show that nucleosome signals inferred from cfDNA are consistent with the redistribution of heterochromatin observed in cellular senescence and aging in other model systems. It also revealed age and deteriorating health status correlate with a low-level enrichment of signals from cells in the thyroid gland. In addition, we detected an overall nucleosome loss at several genomic locations, such as transcription start and termination sites, 5’UTR of L1HS retrotransposons and dimeric AluY elements with age. We profiled cfDNA extracted from a total of 12 individuals across three different ages: 25 year-old (young), 70 year-old (old), healthy 100 year-old (healthy centenarian) samples and unhealthy 100 year-old (unhealthy centenarian) Please note that each wig pair (*100kb.Fnor.smooth.wig and *10bp.Fnor.smooth.wig) were generated from triplicates (rep1, rep2, rep3) together and are linked to the corresponding *rep1 sample records.