Fig. 1

PCLS cultures from aged lungs present a senescent phenotype. A Violin plot representing the age distribution of the individual donors used for the generation of the PCLS cultures. The dashed vertical line indicates the median value, whereas the dotted lines indicate the interquartile ranges. Each symbol represents an individual donor. The table summarizes patient’s characteristics: age (mean, m; standard deviation, SD; confidence interval, CI; down, dw), sex (% male, m), smoking status (n), diagnosis, and other comorbidities, specifically diabetes and cardiovascular disease. B, C Representative confocal microscopy evaluation of PCLS stained for (B) AGER, highly expressed in alveolar type 1 cells, or (C) the alveolar type 2 cell marker pro-SFTPC. Micrographs are projections of 3D captures. Magnification 10X and 30X. AGER and pro-SFTPC, red; DAPI, light blue. D Correlation of deltaCt CDKN2A (p16) (deltaCt = Ct CDKN2A-Ct B2M) and donor age. Association was tested using the one-tailed Spearman rank correlation test, whereas the correlation coefficient (r) is given and a p value lower than 0.05 (*), 0.005 (**), 0.0005 (***), 0.0001 (****) is significant. Each symbol represents an individual donor