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Nintil - From chaos, order: On the nature and measurement of biological aging

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What is aging and how to measure it is an everpresent question in the field of aging research. Given the complexity of biology many give up on the task, proclaiming that "we" (either the field or humanity) don't understand aging. I don't. To me, what aging is is clear enough, and we can understand it as a fractal and emergent phenomenon within a system: there's aging of DNA, aging of cells, aging of organs, aging of organisms. To understand aging and measure it we have to be reasonably acquainted with the systems we are studying, to come up with mental models and validate them against published evidence. The understanding required does not have to be complete and I of course do not claim to understand all of biology, but after having spent a long time thinking about the topic, what follows below is what seems most coherent with that evidence. In classic Nintil fashion, I aim to reach as close as possible conclusions that summarize and harmonize all previously published work by anyone w

Table of Contents Aging by the numbers Here, have a map Causality in biology Environmental vs intrinsic aging Clocks and their weights: DunedinPACE LDL cholesterol Glycated hemoglobin (Hb1Ac) Walking speed Physical strength Can you lift you way to immortality? The search for causal aging markers Doing (aging prediction) by non-doing (aging prediction) Retrotransposon clocks Aging clocks with mouse-only data Aging clocks through EWAS Aging clocks with in vitro data: Polycomb Repressive Complex sites Everything is connected: epigenetic clocks are not unique, but they are convenient Epigenetic cl

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