DNA methylation profiling of blood from healthy Australian donors

We assessed DNA methylation in whole blood samples from an Australian population across different age groups. Our study focused on evaluating the accuracy of DNA methylation age estimation using the Horvath 2018 and PhenoAge clocks. Additionally, we examined previously reported functional measures of aging in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). Our findings indicated that DNA methylation age effectively predicted donor age, while only a limited number of tested cell functions showed correlations with donor age. As part of a study on biomarkers of aging, whole blood was collected in Tempus RNA tubes from 35 adults from Melbourne, Australia in November 2022. All donors were clinically healthy at the time of donation. DNA was isolated directly from whole blood in Tempus tubes using the QIAamp DNA micro kit with a modified protocol (Owen, BM; 2023)