Wednesday, 09 April 2014
Steve Horvath, Professor of Genetics and Biostatistics at UCLA, studied methylation, a natural process that chemically modifies DNA and how it varies with age. Horvath found that the methylation of 353 DNA markers varied consistently with age and could be used as a biological clock. Horvath showed that the biological clock was reset to zero when cells plucked from an adult were reprogrammed back to a stem-cell-like state. This may be proof of concept that the body clock can be reset.
