Tag Archives: age

Age: No more lying

No more lying about your age: your DNA chemistry will let the world know exactly how old your cells are.

IMG_2348One scientist has put together an enormous amount of available bioinformatic information to conclude that the modifications of methylation in each cell’s DNA, which are part of the epigenetics of the cell, can be used as predictors of age.

Steve Horvath, from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) has published a paper in the open access journal Genome Biology with a new approach to the information already published by different laboratories in the past years. Importantly, he collected and analyzed large databases of DNA sequences, that were independently compiled in the past, but that could all be compared because they were obtained using the same DNA sequencing technology. The author acknowledges the “ generosity of hundreds of researchers” that provided the “unprecedented collection of DNA methylation data” in publicly available databases.

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