Signature of Senescence

摘要

Last year, researchers retracted a Science paper that aimed to predict one's chance of living to 100 after critics discovered errors that invalidated the results. Now, the original group has revamped and republished their results, this time in PLoS ONE. Boston University biostatistician Paola Sebastiani, geriatrics specialist Thomas Perls, and their colleagues report a new "genetic signature" of 281 gene variants that has some overlap with the one they described in Science in July 2010, though it's less predictive, except in very old people. The flap began 18 months ago, after the Boston team proposed a gene signature that they said could predict with 77% accuracy one's chance of becoming a centenarian.