Biological Clock Discovered That Measures Ages of Most Human Tissues

starr802 writes "A biological clock capable of determining how old different human tissues and cells are has been discovered by a team of researchers from the University of California Los Angeles (abstract). 'To fight aging, we first need an objective way of measuring it. Pinpointing a set of biomarkers that keeps time throughout the body has been a four-year challenge,' Steve Horvath, a professor of human genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and of biostatistics at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health said in a statement. 'My goal in inventing this clock is to help scientists improve their understanding of what speeds up and slows down the human aging process.'"

Children with progeria make results inconclusive

[willthiswork89]

If you the TFA you will see at the bottom an interesting note: "In an unexpected finding, the cells of children with progeria, a genetic disorder that causes premature aging, appeared normal and reflected their true chronological age" Doesn't this make the results inconclusive at that point? Since children with this disease age faster than anyone else? If his "clock" was accurate wouldn't these children display clocks point to a much older person?

Its good they're doing this research

[Karmashock]

A lot of the problems in our society would be corrected if people lived a great deal longer. That is counter intuitive because many people believe we have over population issues. But in the developed world we don't. The issue is actually that our mortality rate exceeds our birth rate. The difference made up in immigration.

Worse, we have big problems with education and not just education but experience. We invest a lot in people for relatively few productive years of service. Imagine if you could train someone up and they'd be viable in that job for 50 years. Obviously some booster training over the years as required. But consider the wealth of knowledge people would bring to the table.

It might stagnate certain segments as industries became saturated with people more accustomed to older tech... but then we might just get standards that update the tech without changing the way you use it.

Who can say. Regardless, life extension would be useful.

That said, I don't think this discovery is going to be particularly useful in it. Sure. Great they're doing this research and good for them for finding something. But the clock they found appears to be correlative instead of causative. Its a log. Its tree rings. It doesn't cause the aging it is instead caused by the aging.