DNA methylome: Unveiling your biological age

Protein Cell. 2013 Oct;4(10):723-5. doi: 10.1007/s13238-013-3913-0.

Abstract

Hannum and colleagues performed DNA methylation sequencing to examine the relationship between DNA methylome and aging rate. Notably, they succeeded in building a quantitative and reproducible model based on the epigenetic bio-markers to predict aging rate with high accuracy. This progress enlightens us in many aspects particularly in applying this novel set of bio-markers on studying the mechanism of aging rate using adult tissue-specific stem cells, building up a potential quantitative model to explore the mechanism for other epigenetic factors like non-coding RNA, and understanding the principle and mechanism of 3D chromatin structure in epigenetic modulation.

MeSH terms

  • Aging / genetics*
  • Aging / pathology
  • Base Sequence
  • Chromatin / genetics*
  • DNA Methylation / genetics*
  • Epigenesis, Genetic*
  • Genome, Human
  • Humans
  • RNA, Untranslated / genetics
  • Sequence Analysis, DNA / trends

Substances

  • Chromatin
  • RNA, Untranslated