“If you come up with a number that’s older than your cohort, then we’re here to help get you back to not just average, but evenTallyAge, like several biological aging clocks, is rooted in epigenetics, chemical compounds that dangle above DNA like miniature traffic lights that control the on-off switching of particular genes, so that a liver cell becomes a liver cell, and doesn’t turn on genes for a brain cell.
For scientists, epigenetic testing holds out the hope for a deeper understanding of the molecular processes of why humans age, and a faster way to test and validate potential interventions to slow, halt or, the holy grail for immortalists, reverse the aging process.in the muscles, kidneys, and eyeballs of mice via a form of epigenetic reprogramming. Their gene therapy serum is now being tested in non-human primates.
Unexpectedly, they found that some parts of the body, like a woman’s breast tissue, age faster than the rest of the body. Still, all of that is not necessarily enough for people to routinely reach 100 or beyond. “What we need to develop are aging interventions that are much more powerful,” Horvath said. The good news: More than ten thousand scientists are working on it. “If only one of them succeeds, it will change the world for the better,” said Horvath, who recently departed UCLA to join a biotech start-up working on “cellular rejuvenation” therapies.
But people shouldn’t automatically assume that if their biological clock comes back three or five, or 10 years older than their chronological age that they’re actually that much older. Kobor has concerns about “measurement noise.