ISG Director Eric Vilain has been featured in several news reports about his latest publication, “Epigenetic Predictor of Age“. He and other UCLA scientists Sven Bocklandt, Wen Lin, Mary Sehl, Francisco Sánchez, Janet Sinsheimer and Steve Horvath have successfully predicted human ages based upon simple saliva samples. Their predictions have been shown to be accurate to within five years – accuracy unreached in previous attempts.
Abstract: From the moment of conception, we begin to age. A decay of cellular structures, gene regulation, and DNA sequence ages cells and organisms. DNA methylation patterns change with increasing age and contribute to age related disease. Here we identify 88 sites in or near 80 genes for which the degree of cytosine methylation is significantly correlated with age in saliva of 34 male identical twin pairs between 21 and 55 years of age. Furthermore, we validated sites in the promoters of three genes and replicated our results in a general population sample of 31 males and 29 females between 18 and 70 years of age. The methylation of three sites—in the promoters of the EDARADD, TOM1L1, and NPTX2 genes—is linear with age over a range of five decades. Using just two cytosines from these loci, we built a regression model that explained 73% of the variance in age, and is able to predict the age of an individual with an average accuracy of 5.2 years. In forensic science, such a model could estimate the age of a person, based on a biological sample alone. Furthermore, a measurement of relevant sites in the genome could be a tool in routine medical screening to predict the risk of age-related diseases and to tailor interventions based on the epigenetic bio-age instead of the chronological age.
Press:
MSNBC.com, Scientific American, HealthDay News, WebMD, Examiner.com, The Toronto Star, Postmedia News (Canada), Wissenschaft (Germany), Diario de Pernambuco (Brazil), Popular Science, CNET News, NBC Los Angeles, Time, Daily Mail (Britain), Asian News International, The Irish Examiner, The French Tribune, Sing Tao Daily (China), The West Australian, Inilah.com (Indonesia), Radio Santa Cruz (Cuba), Health News (Ukraine), La Nacion (Venezuela), ANSA Latina (Italy), and blogs io9 and Gizmodo and UCLA Newsroom. CBS Newspath also covered the story, which aired June 22 on KCAL-Channel 9 and KCBS-Channel 2 and in 160 other segments nationwide.