The DOI matches its Crossref record; 1 of the 1 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Accurate aging clocks based on accumulating stochastic variation
Open accessPreprint — published as 10.1038/s43587-024-00619-x · Paper page
Abstract
Aging clocks have provided one of the most significant recent breakthroughs in the biology of aging. Such clocks allow the determination of chronological and increasingly also biological age, which is a prerequisite for assessing the effectiveness of interventions in the aging process and preventive treatments of age-related diseases. The most advanced aging clocks are based on age-dependent changes in DNA methylation pattern. The reproducibility of such changes over the life course has reinvigorated the debate whether a programmed process underlies aging. A programmed aging process, however, is incompatible with the evolutionary theory of aging. Aging occurs as a consequence of a vanishing force of selective pressure post-reproduction as no fitness benefit is provided by immortality of the soma. In fact, stochastic events have been observed to increasingly occur during the aging process. Here, we test whether aging clocks could be built with entirely stochastic variation. We find that accumulating stochastic variation is sufficient to accurately predict chronological and biological age. Moreover, current aging clocks are entirely compatible with random alterations in the methylation or transcriptomic patterns. Our analysis unifies the clock measure of aging with the evolutionary theory of aging and predicts that any set of data that have a ground state at the age zero with accumulating stochastic variation could be used for building accurate aging clocks.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
The central role of DNA damage in the ageing process
Schumacher, B., Pothof, J., Vijg, J., & Hoeijmakers, J. H. J. (2021) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03307-7 · Cited by 907
Self-citation
Flagged first, then by citations
Metadata
- Authors
- Schumacher, B., & Meyer, D.
- Affiliations
- University of Cologne (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Schumacher, Björn
- Meyer, David
- Venue
- Nature Aging
- Published
- 2023-10-02
- Volume
- 4
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 871-885
- ISSN
- 2662-8465 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC11186771
- OpenAlex
- W4396761662
- Cited by
- 128
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 43 · 2025: 60 · 2024: 21 · 2023: 3
- FWCI
- 14.96
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Nature Aging (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Research Square (acceptedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- John Templeton Foundation (61734)
- European Commission (H2020-MSCA-ITN-2018)
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (GRK-2407, SFB829, 390661388, SCHU 2494/11-1, 496650118, KFO286, EXC2030, SCHU 2494/7-1, KFO-329, SCHU 2494/3‐1, 524088035, SCHU 2494/10‐1)
- Deutsche Krebshilfe
- Universität zu Köln (EXC 2030 -390661388)
- Horizon 2020 Framework Programme (MSCA‐ITN‐2018, H2020-MSCA, 390661388, H2020-MSCA-ITN-2018 (Healthage and ADDRESS ITNs), H2020-MSCA-ITN-2018, H2020-MSCA-ITN)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Aging › Genetics, Aging, and Longevity in Model Organisms
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Epigenetics and DNA Methylation
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Cell Biology › Telomeres, Telomerase, and Senescence
- Keywords
- aging clocks, stochastic variability, biological age, chronological age, DNA methylation, transcriptomics, programmed aging, heterochronic parabiosis, caloric restriction, partial reprogramming, smoking, age-related diseases
- MeSH terms
- Aging, Animals, Biological Clocks, Computer Simulation, Humans, Male, Models, Biological, Parabiosis, Smoking, Stochastic Processes, DNA Methylation, Caloric Restriction, Transcriptome
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
