REVIEW article
Front. Aging
Sec. Aging and the Immune System
This article is part of the Research TopicBiomarkers and Aging: New Insights for Precision MedicineView all articles
Methylation and Algorithms in Biological Aging: A Scoping Review
Provisionally accepted
Alison Ziesel1*
Jennifer Reeves2
Anastasia Mallidou2Lorelei Newton2
Ryan E Rhodes2Jie Zhang2
Theone Paterson2Hosna Jabbari1*- 1University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
- 2University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada
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The role of DNA methylation in the process of biological aging is a particularly active area of research, where methylation changes may be a consequence or a driver in the deviation between biological and chronological age. We employ a scoping review strategy to analyze the results of 435 relevant research papers, 167 of which employed methylation-based strategies to interrogate biological age. Our work details the progression and refinement of these strategies over time, as well as the development of novel methylation-based clocks and algorithmic methods. Our chosen review strategy allows for the identification of research findings consistent and discordant with one another, as well as focusing on exciting, potential research areas regarding measurement, calculation, and assessment of epigenetic biological age.
Keywords: biological age, Biological Clocks, Epigenomics, methylomics, biomarkers
Received: 09 Aug 2025; Accepted: 19 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ziesel, Reeves, Mallidou, Newton, Rhodes, Zhang, Paterson and Jabbari. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Alison Ziesel, ziesel@ualberta.ca
Hosna Jabbari, jabbari@ualberta.ca
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.