DNA甲基化年龄预测研究进展

衰老是生物体多个器官、组织和细胞功能下降的一个过程，与衰老相关的疾病会在衰老过程中逐渐出现，同时伴随着表观遗传学机制的变化。相关领域的研究也表明，表观遗传学机制的变化过程与生物学年龄的增长密切相关。随着全球老龄化现象的加剧，抗衰老逐渐成为一个备受关注的研究方向，然而衰老过程的表观遗传学表征、机理和定量分析方式仍然需要深入研究。该文对当前基于 DNA 甲基化的衰老与年龄预测的领域研究进展进行梳理，介绍表观遗传时钟、生物时钟和 DNA 甲基化的基本原理，以及相应表观遗传时钟的典型研究方法和有效样本资源，并深入讨论该领域研究存在的挑战及发展趋势，旨在为研究者提供全面的参考，促进抗衰老相关临床实践和大健康应用的发展。

Advances in DNA Methylation Age Prediction Research

Aging is a process in which the functions of multiple organs, tissues and cells of an organism decline, and diseases related to aging will gradually appear during the aging process, accompanied by changes in epigenetic mechanisms, and studies in related fields have also shown that the process of changes in epigenetic mechanisms is closely related to biological ageing. With the intensification of global aging phenomenon, anti-aging has gradually become a research direction of great interest, however, the epigenetic characterization, mechanism and quantitative analysis of the aging process still need to be studied in depth. In this paper, we review the current research progress in the field of aging and age prediction based on DNA methylation, introduce the basic principles of epigenetic clock, biological clock and DNA methylation, as well as the typical research methods and effective sample resources of the corresponding epigenetic clocks, and discuss in-depth the challenges of the research in this field as well as the trend of development, with the aim of providing comprehensive references for the researchers to facilitate the anti-aging related clinical practice and the development of large health applications.