On the Development and Use of Aging Clocks and Mortality Timers

There are many ways in which biological data can be processed via machine learning techniques to produce clocks that assess the burden of aging. Today's open access paper draws a distinction between aging clocks, which provide information on biological age, and mortality timers, which provide information on risk of death. Aging affects everything in the body, and all aspects of physiology and cellular biochemistry undergo at least some change. So epigenetic marks on the genome, levels of transcription of various genes, circulating proteins in the bloodstream, the pattern of microbial populations in the gut microbiome, specific chemical modifications to proteins, and much more can be assessed in bulk and then mined for associations with age and mortality risk. Even physical measures such as grip strength, ability to stand from sitting, walking speed, and so forth, can be algorithmically combined to form clocks. With so much data to use in the production of clocks, it is inevitable that the quality and applicability of individual clocks will vary widely on a case by case basis. It is at present always unclear as to how the specific metrics that form the clock are caused by specific underlying processes of aging. That isn't an obstacle to the use of the clock in studies of natural aging, but it is a roadblock to the use of a clock as a way to assess the success of a potential age-slowing or age-reversing interventions. Interventions that address mechanisms of aging only i...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs