ArticleScience advances2021
Epigenetic clocks reveal a rejuvenation event during embryogenesis followed by aging.
Article in Science advances, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 73 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
73 citing papers in PubMed, 113 citations in OpenAlex.
- Article
- Ferroptosis-related stress during aging and its relevance to disease.GeroScience · 2026Review
- Social determinants of health and epigenetic clocks: a systematic review and meta-analysis of 140 studies.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Article
- Foundations of Gerophysics.Aging · 2026Article
- Article
- Aging clocks delineate neuron types vulnerable or resilient to neurodegeneration and identify neuroprotective interventions.Nature aging · 2026Article
- Gene expression and co-expression heterogeneity patterns and biodemography analyses during the cell cycle encourage aging studies in archaea.GeroScience · 2026Article
- Research progress on blood therapy for anti-aging.Journal of advanced research · 2026Review
- Cell type-agnostic transcriptomic signatures enable uniform comparisons of neural maturation.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Homoharringtonine exhibits senotherapeutic activity that mitigates diet- and age-associated obesity and insulin resistance and extends lifespan in mice.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Evolutionary Conservation of Lipid-Associated Epigenetic Signatures and Their Distinct Roles in Tissue Identity and Mammalian Aging.Biomedicines · 2026Article
- Evolution of Senescence by Damage Accumulation That Accelerates With Age Throughout an Organism's Lifespan.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Transcriptome remodeling of mouse hearts during postnatal cardiac maturation and under proteotoxic stress.Molecular biology reports · 2026Article
- Epigenetic aging and rejuvenation of the brain: drivers, consequences, and interventions.BMB reports · 2026Review
- Article
- A Biophysics of Epigenetic Rejuvenation.Cells · 2025Article
- The Morphological, Behavioral, and Transcriptomic Life Cycle of Anthrobots.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2025Article
- Toward precision interventions and metrics of inflammaging.Nature aging · 2025Review
- Organ Specificity and Commonality of Epigenetic Aging in Low- and High-Running Capacity Rats.Aging cell · 2025Observational
13 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The notion that the germ line does not age goes back to the 19th-century ideas of August Weismann. However, being metabolically active, the germ line accumulates damage and other changes over time, i.e., it ages. For new life to begin in the same young state, the germ line must be rejuvenated in the offspring. Here, we developed a multi-tissue epigenetic clock and applied it, together with other aging clocks, to track changes in biological age during mouse and human prenatal development. This analysis revealed a significant decrease in biological age, i.e., rejuvenation, during early stages of embryogenesis, followed by an increase in later stages. We further found that pluripotent stem cells do not age even after extensive passaging and that the examined epigenetic age dynamics is conserved across species. Overall, this study uncovers a natural rejuvenation event during embryogenesis and suggests that the minimal biological age (ground zero) marks the beginning of organismal aging.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.