ArticleNature aging2025
Transposable element 5mC methylation state of blood cells predicts age and disease.
Article in Nature aging, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed.
- THE1 repeats: Ancient endogenous retroviruses rampaging behind sarcoid myopathy.Journal of human genetics · 2026Review
- cGAS-deficient mice display premature aging associated with derepression of LINE1 elements and inflammation.Nature aging · 2026Article
- Review
- Enhancing the performance and interpretability of epigenetic clocks.Nucleic acids research · 2026Article
- Fiber-TEnCATS reveals haplotype-specific chromatin accessibility and DNA methylation at human L1HS loci.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Transcriptional Activation of Transposable Element (TE)-Associated Genes Is Frequently Associated with Altered Promoter Methylation in Placenta and Melanoma.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Article
- CpG Atlas: A centralized multi-layer database and AI interface for DNA methylation research.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Longitudinal Repeatome Remodeling in Peripheral Blood Following Parkinson's Disease Diagnosis.Genes · 2026Article
- Peripheral blood mononuclear cell DNA methylation signatures guide surgical decision-making in indeterminate pulmonary nodules.Communications medicine · 2026Article
- Article
- The DNA methylation landscape of naturally short-lived killifish.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Aging drives a program of DNA methylation decay in plant organs.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- DNA Methylation, SERPING1 Expression, and Immune-related Traits in Osteoporosis: A Mendelian Randomization Study And SupportiveEndocrine, metabolic & immune disorders drug targets · 2026Article
- Do we actually need aging clocks?npj aging · 2025Review
- Review
- Molecular effects of transposable element sequences in mammalian cells.Genome biology · 2025Review
- Transposable element methylation tracks age.Nature aging · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Transposable elements (TEs) are DNA sequences that expand selfishly in the genome, possibly causing severe cellular damage. While normally silenced, TEs have been shown to activate during aging. DNA 5-methylcytosine (5mC) is one of the main epigenetic modifications by which TEs are silenced and has been used to train highly accurate age predictors. Yet, one common criticism of such predictors is that they lack interpretability. In this study, we investigate the changes in TE 5mC methylation that occur during aging in human blood using published methylation array data. We find that evolutionarily young long interspersed nuclear elements 1 (L1s), the only known TEs capable of autonomous transposition in humans, undergo the fastest loss of 5mC methylation, suggesting an active mechanism of de-repression. The same young L1s also showed preferential gain in chromatin accessibility but not expression. The long terminal repeat retrotransposons THE1A and THE1C also showed very rapid 5mC loss. We then show that accurate age predictors can be trained on both 5mC methylation of individual TE copies and average methylation of TE families genome wide. Lastly, we show that while old L1s gradually lose 5mC during the entire lifespan, demethylation of young L1s only happens late in life and is associated with cancer.
Indexed as
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.