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Studies of hTERT DNA methylation assays on the human age prediction

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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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Funding

This work was sponsored by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31671309), the Opening Project of Shanghai Key Laboratory of Crime Scene Evidence (2018XCWZK12), and the Development Project of Qinghai Provincial Key Laboratory (2017-ZJ-Y10).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Bioreactor Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, 130 Meilong Road, Shanghai, 200237, China

    Ye Xin, Kaikai Dong, Fangqi Cao & Ping Shi

  2. Shanghai Key Laboratory of Crime Scene Evidence, Shanghai Research Institute of Criminal Science and Technology, Zhongshan North No 1 Road, Shanghai, 200083, China

    Fangqi Cao & Wenbin Liu

  3. Department of Clinical Laboratory, Shanghai Xuhui District Dahua Hospital, Shanghai, 200237, China

    Yuxiang Tian

  4. Qinghai Provincial Key Laboratory of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Biological Resources, Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiguan Avenue 59, Xining, 11 Qinghai Province, 810001, China

    Jing Sun, Min Peng & Ping Shi

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  1. Ye Xin
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  2. Kaikai Dong
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  3. Fangqi Cao
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  4. Yuxiang Tian
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  5. Jing Sun
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  6. Min Peng
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  7. Wenbin Liu
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  8. Ping Shi
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Correspondence to Wenbin Liu or Ping Shi.

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“All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.”

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Xin, Y., Dong, K., Cao, F. et al. Studies of hTERT DNA methylation assays on the human age prediction. Int J Legal Med 133, 1333–1339 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00414-019-02076-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00414-019-02076-3

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