[ExI] Biomarkers and ageing: The clock-watcher

[Dave Sill]

No comments on this? Seems pretty significant.

On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 1:32 PM, Dave Sill <sparge at gmail.com> wrote:
> He has discovered an algorithm, based on the methylation status of a
> set of these genomic positions, that provides a remarkably accurate
> age estimate — not of the cells, but of the person the cells inhabit.
> White blood cells, for example, which may be just a few days or weeks
> old, will carry the signature of the 50-year-old donor they came from,
> plus or minus a few years. The same is true for DNA extracted from a
> cheek swab, the brain, the colon and numerous other organs. This sets
> the method apart from tests that rely on biomarkers of age that work
> in only one or two tissues, including the gold-standard dating
> procedure, aspartic acid racemization, which analyses proteins that
> are locked away for a lifetime in tooth or bone.