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. 2012 Dec;11(6):1132-4.
doi: 10.1111/acel.12005. Epub 2012 Oct 14.

Methylation of ELOVL2 gene as a new epigenetic marker of age

Paolo Garagnani  1 , Maria G Bacalini, Chiara Pirazzini, Davide Gori, Cristina Giuliani, Daniela Mari, Anna M Di Blasio, Davide Gentilini, Giovanni Vitale, Sebastiano Collino, Serge Rezzi, Gastone Castellani, Miriam Capri, Stefano Salvioli, Claudio Franceschi
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Free article

Methylation of ELOVL2 gene as a new epigenetic marker of age

Paolo Garagnani et al. Aging Cell. 2012 Dec.
Free article

Abstract

The discovery of biomarkers able to predict biological age of individuals is a crucial goal in aging research. Recently, researchers' attention has turn toward epigenetic markers of aging. Using the Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation450 BeadChip on whole blood DNA from a small cohort of 64 subjects of different ages, we identified 3 regions, the CpG islands of ELOVL2, FHL2, and PENK genes, whose methylation level strongly correlates with age. These results were confirmed by the Sequenom's EpiTYPER assay on a larger cohort of 501 subjects from 9 to 99 years, including 7 cord blood samples. Among the 3 genes, ELOVL2 shows a progressive increase in methylation that begins since the very first stage of life (Spearman's correlation coefficient = 0.92) and appears to be a very promising biomarker of aging.

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