Table 1.

Summary of major findings of recent literature linking aging and chromatin.

Organism	Summary of observations	Reference
S. cerevisiae	Increased H4K16ac, decreased Sir2, loss of histones with age	Dang et al. (2009)
S. cerevisiae	Loss of histones with age. Overexpression of histones extends lifespan	Feser et al. (2010)
Human cells	Formation during senescence of senescence-associated heterochromatin foci, with high levels of H3K9me3, H3K27me3, and HP1	Narita et al. (2003), Zhang et al. (2005), Chandra et al. (2012)
Human cells	Enrichment in H3K4me3 and H3K27me3 marks in LADs with age. Loss of H3K4me3 at downregulated genes, loss of H3K27me3 at upregulated genes	Shah et al. (2013)
Human cells	Smoothing of chromatin—open and closed regions more similar to each other during senescence. Increased expression of numerous TEs	De Cecco et al. (2013)
C. elegans	H3K4 methyltransferase knockdown increases lifespan. H3K4 demethylase knockdown shortens lifespan	Greer et al. (2010, 2011)
C. elegans	LSD1 knockdown (H3K4 and H3K9 demethylase) increases lifespan	McColl et al. (2008)
C. elegans	UTX-1 knockdown (H3K27 demethylase) increases lifespan. Decline in H3K27 methylation with age	Jin et al. (2011), Maures et al. (2011)
D. melanogaster	H3K4me3, H3K36me3 decline with age. H3K9me3, HP1 increase and relocalize with age	Wood et al., 2010
D. melanogaster	Decreased heterochromatin with age, HP1 overexpression extends lifespan	Larson et al. (2012)
D. melanogaster	H3K27 methyltransferase knockdown increases lifespan	Siebold et al. (2010)
Mouse	Numerous tissue-specific changes in DNA methylation patterns with age	Maegawa et al. (2010)
Mouse	Decreased histone acetylation, increased histone methylation with age in cochlea	Watanabe and Bloch (2013)
Mouse	Histone methylation and acetylation changes correlate with increased memory formation in neurodegeneration model	Fischer et al. (2007)
Mouse	H4K12 hypoacetylation with age in hippocampus. HDAC inhibitor improves phenotypes	Peleg et al. (2010)
Rat	Reduced H3K9 and H4K12 acetylation with age correlates with LTP defect. HDAC inhibitor improves phenotypes	Zeng et al. (2011)
Mouse	Decreased H4 acetylation in Alzheimer’s model with LTP defects. HDAC inhibitor improves phenotypes	Francis et al. (2009), Kilgore et al. (2010)
Mouse	H4K16 hypoacetylation in progeria model, HDAC inhibition improves phenotypes and extends lifespan	Krishnan et al. (2011)
Mouse cells	Gene expression correlates with nuclear lamina colocalization	Peric-Hupkes et al. (2010)
Human cells	Nuclear lamin B1 decreases during senescence	Shimi et al. (2011), Freund et al. (2012)
Human cells	Defects in lamin A processing and nuclear structure with age	Scaffidi and Misteli (2006), McClintock et al. (2007)
C. elegans	Loss of peripheral heterochromatin and deterioration of nuclear structure with age. Lamin knockdown shortens lfespan	Haithcock et al. (2005)
Rat	Acute stress induces H3K9me3 and TE silencing in hippocampus	Hunter et al. (2012)
S. cerevisiae	Ty1 mobility and genomic instability increase with age	Maxwell et al. (2011)
C. elegans	Cer1 retrotransposon expression increased with age	Dennis et al. (2012)
Mouse	DNA methylation and histone modifications (Ac/Me) change at TE loci with age	Ryu et al. (2011)
Human cells	Alu transcripts increase during senescence, targeting by shRNA reverses senescent phenotype	Wang et al. (2011)
Human, mouse	Dicer1 loss in age-related macular degeneration leads to increased cytotoxic Alu transcripts, antisense targeting of Alu reverses phenotypes	Kaneko et al. (2011)
D. melanogaster	Retrotransposons are active in fly neurons	Perrat et al. (2013)
D. melanogaster	TE expression and somatic transposition increases with age in fly brain. Disrupting RNAi pathway causes increase in transposition and memory defects	Li et al. (2013)