Forensic biomedical scientists have developed a test to predict an individual's age on the basis of blood or teeth samples.
The test may be particularly useful for the police, as it can help track down criminals or identify human remains.
When forensic examiners find traces of blood at a crime scene, they can try to identify the perpetrator on the basis of DNA. Now, the blood samples can also be used to predict the criminal's age, said scientists from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium.
This is also the case for deceased individuals: when traditional methods do not lead to identification, the forensic examiners can use blood or teeth samples for age estimation.
Human tissues and organs change as we grow older. This ageing process is regulated by our DNA. The KU Leuven researchers are the first to have successfully used this ageing process, embedded in our DNA, to predict individuals' age with great accuracy.
"The behaviour of our organs and tissues depends on which of our genes are activated. As we grow older, some genes are switched on, while others are switched off," said Professor Bram Bekaert from the KU Leuven Forensic Biomedical Sciences Unit.
"This process is partly regulated by methylation, whereby methyl groups are added to our DNA. In specific locations, genes with high methylation levels are deactivated," Bekaert said.
Bekaert and his colleagues were able to predict individuals' age on the basis of a set of four age-associated DNA methylation markers. The methylation levels of these markers can be used for highly accurate age predictions.
The researchers were able to determine individuals' age with a margin of error of 3.75 years for blood samples and 4.86 years for teeth.
The research is published in the journal Epigenetics.
