In the biological clock of a person found the main gear
For the determination of age turned out to be only a single group of genes.
For the past 5 years biological age is determined by “hours of methylation” — a method that considers the number of sites in the genome that were subjected to methylation. The longer an organism lives, the more such sites. Scientists from Massachusetts claim to have found the heart of this clockwork — a group of genes that works so actively that age can be accurately determined by her alone.
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DNA methylation is the process of mounting on the double helix inactivating the labels of the methyl groups. The DNA is twisted and becomes unavailable to read the information. This process occurs gradually, and with age, more genes are found to be closed and cease to operate. This is based on the principle of “methylation clock” — method of determination of biological age by the number of methyl marks in certain parts of the DNA.
The first clock invented American Steve Horvath, assess the methylation of 353 sites in different regions of the genome. However, a fellow Croat from Massachusetts has proposed a more simple technique. They built their watch, preferring to assess for methylation of only one group of genes coding for ribosomal RNA and are thus correctly estimate the age of the mice, dogs and humans.