Systems for identifying cosmetic agents for skin care compositions

A system for identifying connections between a cosmetic agent and at least one gene associated with a skin aging condition, comprising:

• a. at least one computer readable medium having stored thereon a plurality of instances and a skin aging gene expression signature, wherein each instance comprises an ordered list of identifiers representing a plurality of up-regulated and a plurality of down regulated genes differentially expressed in response to contact between the cosmetic agent and a human fibroblast cell or a human keratinocyte cell, the skin aging gene expression signature comprises one or more lists comprising a plurality of identifiers representing a plurality of up-regulated genes and a plurality of down-regulated genes associated with a skin aging condition, and from about 80% to about 100% of the plurality of identifiers associated with the skin aging gene expression signature represent a gene set forth in any of Tables A to D;
• and
• b. a first computing device comprising computer-readable instructions that cause the computing device to:
• i. access the plurality of instances and the skin aging gene expression signature stored on the computer readable medium;
• ii. comparing each of the instances to the skin aging gene expression signature, wherein the comparison comprises comparing each identifier in the gene expression signature list(s) with the position of the same identifier in the instance list;
• and
• iii. assigning a connectivity score to each of the plurality of instances based on the comparison in (ii).