Fig. 6. Alteration in the miRNA contents in plasma and sEVs during the aging process.
a, Heatmap illustrating the differentially expressed plasma miRNAs (mean reads > 50, |fold change| > 2 and P < 0.05) in aged mouse plasma versus young mouse plasma (n = 6). b, Venn diagram showing the overlap of age-related circulating miRNAs that are identified by small RNA sequencing and literature mining. c,d, Fold changes of miRNAs in aged mouse plasma relative to young mouse plasma (n = 12) and in aged human plasma relative to young human plasma (n = 20). The blue box represents high relative expression level, and the red box represents low relative expression level. The names of miRNAs are marked with blue and red if they were significantly higher or lower in aged plasma versus young plasma (|fold change| > 2 and P < 0.05). e,f, Fold changes of miRNAs in aged mouse plasma sEVs relative to young mouse plasma sEVs (n = 4) and in aged human plasma sEVs relative to young human plasma sEVs (n = 6). The blue box represents high relative expression level, and the red box represents low relative expression level. The names of miRNAs are marked with blue and red if they were significantly higher or lower in aged plasma sEVs versus young plasma sEVs (|fold change| > 2 and P < 0.05). Significance was determined using two-sided Student’s t-test in c–f. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01 and ***P < 0.005.