Full-length PacBio Iso-Seq transcriptome of the African turquoise killifish (Nothobranchius furzeri, GRZ strain) across three aging stages: young, young adult, and old
This BioProject contains full-length PacBio Iso-Seq raw subreads from Nothobranchius furzeri (GRZ strain) at three aging stages (young, young adult, and old).The African turquoise killifish (Nothobranchius furzeri), the shortest-lived vertebrate model for aging research, was used to investigate isoform-level transcriptome diversity across three key life stages (3, 8.5, and 14 weeks), with a focus on alternative splicing changes in genes exhibiting prominent expression shifts during aging. PacBio Iso-Seq data were generated from pooled muscle and brain samples across three age groups, and transcript isoforms were classified using the FLAIR2 and SQANTI3 pipelines. Based on the long-read data, we identified a total of 68,101 isoforms, of which 22,292 corresponded to alternatively spliced forms absent from the reference annotation. Gene Ontology enrichment analysis of genes associated with age-related expression changes revealed enrichment of the protein phosphorylation pathway, and in-depth analysis of up-regulated transcripts identified a progressive increase in intron retention in CDKL1 during aging. These findings suggest that splicing transitions in the transcriptome may serve as a key molecular feature of the aging process.