Human Cell Aging Transcriptome Atlas (HCATA): a single-cell atlas of age-associated transcriptomic alterations across human tissues

Biological aging is associated with progressively more severe genetic and epigenetic alterations. While these changes are expected to affect the transcriptional profile of cells, the magnitude of that effect is unknown as the aging transcriptome is still poorly understood. Understanding the aging transcriptional landscape will give us greater insight into how cells are affected by and/or respond to the aging process. To facilitate the large-scale exploration of the aging transcriptome, we report the development of the Human Cell Aging Transcriptome Atlas (HCATA). HCATA, contains single-cell RNA-sequencing datasets from 76 publications totaling 92 million cells and 3,475 tissue-level samples across more than 50 tissue types with ages ranging from 0 to 103 years. HCATA includes a genome browser that allows users to interactively explore age-related differential expression, as well as functions to explore related pathways at the tissue and cell-type level. HCATA is publicly accessible at http://hcata-xiaodonglab.org:3304 .