Back

The DREAM complex links somatic mutation, lifespan, and disease

Koch, Z.; Nandi, S. P.; Licon, K.; Bujarrabal-Dueso, A.; Meyer, D. H.; Saeed, S.; Perampalam, P.; Dick, F. A.; Schumacher, B.; Alexandrov, L. B.; Ideker, T.

2025-09-18 bioinformatics
10.1101/2025.09.15.676396 bioRxiv
Show abstract

The DREAM complex has emerged as a central repressor of DNA repair, raising questions as to whether such repression exerts long-term effects on human health. Here we establish that DREAM activity significantly impacts lifetime somatic mutation burden, and that such effects are linked to altered lifespan and age-related disease pathology. First, joint profiling of DREAM activity and somatic mutations across a single-cell atlas of 21 mouse tissues shows that cellular niches with lower DREAM activity have decreased mutation rates. Second, DREAM activity predicts the varied lifespans observed across 92 mammals, with low activity marking longer-lived species. Third, reduced DREAM activity in Alzheimers patients predicts late disease onset and decreased risk for severe neuropathology. Finally, we show DREAM knockout protects against mutation accumulation in vivo, reducing single-base substitutions by 4.2% and insertion/deletions by 19.6% in brains of mice. These findings position DREAM as a key regulator of aging.

Matching journals

The top 3 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.