Methylation of ELOVL 2 gene as a new epigenetic marker of age

作者：Paolo Garagnani, Maria Giulia Bacalini, Chiara Pirazzini, Davide Gori, Cristina Giuliani, Daniela Mari, Anna Maria Di Blasio, Davide Gentilini, Giovanni Vitale, Sebastiano Collino, Serge Rezzi, Gastone Castellani, Miriam Capri, Stefano Salvioli, Claudio Franceschi · 发表于：Aging Cell · 年份：2012 · DOI：10.1111/acel.12005 · 被引用次数：511 · 研究领域：Epigenetics and DNA Methylation、Cancer-related gene regulation、RNA modifications and cancer

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.