voyAGEr: free web interface for the analysis of age-related gene expression alterations in human tissues

Abstract

We herein introduce voyAGEr, an online graphical interface to explore age-related gene expression alterations in 48 human tissues. voyAGEr offers a visualization and statistical toolkit for the finding and functional exploration of sex- and tissue-specific transcriptomic changes with age. In its conception, we developed a novel bioinformatics pipeline leveraging RNA sequencing data, from the GTEx project, for more than 700 individuals. voyAGEr reveals transcriptomic signatures of the known asynchronous aging between tissues, allowing the observation of tissue-specific age-periods of major transcriptional changes, that likely reflect so-called digital aging, associated with alterations in different biological pathways, cellular composition, and disease conditions. voyAGEr therefore supports researchers with no expertise in bioinformatics in elaborating, testing and refining their hypotheses on the molecular nature of human aging and its association with pathologies, thereby also assisting in the discovery of novel therapeutic targets. voyAGEr is freely available at https://compbio.imm.medicina.ulisboa.pt/voyAGEr