Effects of aging on ribosomal protein L7 messenger RNA levels in cultured rat preadipocytes

Ribosomal protein L7 mRNA is a cell cycle-independent message whose levels are lower in late passage “senescent” fibroblasts than early passage cultures. To determine whether decreases in L7 mRNA levels also occur during aging in tissues in vivo and whether reduced L7 mRNA is caused by terminal differentiation, we measured L7 and adipsin (a differentiation-dependent serine protease) mRNA levels in undifferentiated and differentiated preadipocytes and glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase mRNA in differentiated preadipocytes cultured from perirenal fat depots of 3-, 17-, and 24-month-old male rats. L7 mRNA levels decreased with increasing age and were not affected by differentiation. In the same cultures, adipsin mRNA levels did not increase with age but did increase with differentiation, confirming that the preadipocytes exposed to enriched medium had, in fact, differentiated. Glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase mRNA levels did not change with age indicating that the decrease in L7 mRNA was not a result of a general decrease in mRNA with age. These observations are consistent with the hypotheses that decreasing L7 mRNA levels are associated with aging and that late passage fibroblasts have features in common with senescence. The observations are not consistent with the hypothesis that senescent changes in cellular function are caused by terminal differentiation.