Scientists Detail New Insights on Human Aging

Are all forms of aging created equal? Turns out your biological age is not necessarily your chronological age, and vice versa. In 2022, aging researcher Dr. Steve Horvath told The Guardian that “biological age is a better predictor of morbidity risk than chronological age.” It’s a new spin on the idea that you’re only as old as you feel — but it’s also an area of science where new discoveries are still being made. And the findings of one recent study suggest there’s more going on when it comes to biological aging than we may have expected.

The title of a paper published earlier this year in Nature Aging — “Somatic mutation as an explanation for epigenetic aging” — gives a good sense of what to expect. In other words, the scientists who conducted this research uncovered insights into the connection between genetic mutations and the way that people age which could lead to greater knowledge of the aging process.

“[U]nderstanding the causality among mutations, methylation and aging has important implications for how we seek to prevent or reverse aging,” the study’s authors wrote. As Nicoletta Lanese details at Live Science, methylation is one type of epigenetics and involves “involves molecules called methyl groups latching onto cytosine.” Lanese points out that mutations that alter the presence of cytosine can reduce methylation on that location within a molecule of DNA.

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These researchers are still looking for a greater sense of what these connections can tell us — but, as one of the study’s authors told Live Science, there is a “very clear relationship” between mutation and methylation.

Among the questions left unanswered by this paper is whether mutation or methylation comes first. These findings have given future researchers more avenues to explore, though — and, hopefully, created the potential for more findings into the details of how humans age.