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01-09-2019 | Original Article

Studies of hTERT DNA methylation assays on the human age prediction

Authors: Ye Xin, Kaikai Dong, Fangqi Cao, Yuxiang Tian, Jing Sun, Min Peng, Wenbin Liu, Ping Shi

Published in: International Journal of Legal Medicine | Issue 5/2019

Abstract

As an important aspect of epigenetics, DNA methylation has been proven to be suitable for forensic DNA analysis. By detecting changes in DNA methylation, it is desirable to construct a model of age patterns associated with it to infer the age of the individual. The hTERT gene methylation is closely related to tumors, but there are few reports on the relationship between hTERT gene promoter methylation and age. In this study, we utilized the methylation-specific polymerase chain reaction and real-time PCR (relative quantification and absolute quantification) approach to explore the connection between hTERT DNA methylation and age prediction. We fit three models for age prediction based on methylation assay for 90 blood samples from donors aged 1–79 years old. Among them, the model of absolute quantification of real-time enabled the age prediction with R² = 0.9634. We verified the linear regression model with a validation set of 30 blood samples where prediction average error was 4.29 years. Generally, this reliable method improves the DNA methylation analysis of forensic samples.

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Title: Studies of hTERT DNA methylation assays on the human age prediction
Authors: Ye Xin
Kaikai Dong
Fangqi Cao
Yuxiang Tian
Jing Sun
Min Peng
Wenbin Liu
Ping Shi
Publication date: 01-09-2019
Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Published in: International Journal of Legal Medicine / Issue 5/2019
Print ISSN: 0937-9827
Electronic ISSN: 1437-1596
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00414-019-02076-3

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