Not sure how interesting this will be to people who know a lot on aging/longevity research.

A team of researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School have found evidence of mouse and human germline cells resetting their biological age. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes their study of the aging process in germline cells and what they found by doing so.

As animals grow older, all of the cells in their body replicate themselves repeatedly. As the process continues, errors in replicating and other external factors (such as exposure to pollutants) lead to gradual decay in cell quality, which is all part of the natural aging process. In this new effort, the researchers have found evidence showing that germline cells have a mechanism for resetting this process, allowing offspring to reset their aging clocks.

Germline cells pass on genetic material from parent to offspring during the reproductive process. For many years, scientists have wondered why these cells do not inherit the age of their parents. And for many years, they assumed that the cells were ageless, but recent work has shown that they do, in fact, age. So that raised the question of how offspring are able to begin their lives with fresh cells.

I was at HudsonAlpha’s spinoff clinic for rare diseases, the Smith Family Clinic for Genomic Medicine. Most people don’t know this, but the second largest biomedical research campus in the USA and the fourth in the entire world is in Alabama. Long-read genome sequencing is essential for aging research because it is able to detect methylation and acetylation very conveniently, as well as major structural changes to the genome that are associated with both rare disease AND aging. This is an explanation of how long-read sequencing is able to fill in sequence gaps caused by Illumina short-read technology.

In 2020, Chromosome X and 8 were finished end-to-end with long-read sequencing, for the first time. And now in 2021, a complete gapless human genome is on the horizon. The Human Genome Project may finally, truly become complete.

February 3, 2021 (Huntsville, Ala.) – Researchers at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology used a new, cutting-edge genomic sequencing technology to help physicians make diagnoses for two pediatric patients who had been on long diagnostic journeys.

Limitations of traditional sequencing in neurodevelopmental disease diagnosis

Neurodevelopmental diseases, many of which are genetic in nature, affect one to three percent of children and cause a range of physical and intellectual disabilities. Identifying the genetic variants, or changes in DNA, that lead to these diseases can provide a precise diagnosis, guide treatment approaches, and give families the answer to their years-long medical mystery.

Changes in epigenetic age acceleration (EAA) were significant over time, with the biggest increase — 4.9 years — seen immediately after the completion of radiotherapy (PChanges in epigenetic age acceleration (EAA) were significant over time, with the biggest increase — 4.9 years — seen immediately after the completion of radiotherapy (P0.001), reported Canhua Xiao, RN, PhD, of Emory University School of Nursing in Atlanta, and colleagues.

The study also demonstrated that EAA was associated with greater inflammation and fatigue, even up to a year after treatment, they noted in Cancer.

While chronological age is a strong risk factor for chronic health problems, Xiao and colleagues said that it often differs from epigenetic age and may be a limited predictor of age-associated disorders. On the other hand, they noted that epigenetic clocks, based on blood DNA methylation measures, have become reliable aging biomarkers.