![animal age to human age animal age to human age](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/branded_news/16BDF/production/_96015139_africanlion2.jpg)
![animal age to human age animal age to human age](https://helloveto.com/img/tableau-age-chien.png)
What emerged from the study is a graph that can be used to match up the age of your dog with the comparable human age (see figure: go./2Ze8ZCd). It's also important that we better understand their aging process, he said, as veterinarians frequently use the old 1:7 years ratio to determine a dog's age and use that information to guide diagnostic and treatment decisions. Given how closely they live with us, perhaps more than any other animal, a dog's environmental and chemical exposures are very similar to humans, and they receive nearly the same levels of health care.
![animal age to human age animal age to human age](https://i2.wp.com/wildernessusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Screen-Shot-2016-03-24-at-10.14.27-AM.png)
As the first to sequence the dog genome, Ostrander provided valuable input on analyzing it.ĭogs are an interesting animal to study, Ideker said. Bannasch provided blood samples from 105 Labrador retrievers. To do that, Ideker and Wang collaborated with dog genetics experts Danika Bannasch, DVM, PhD, professor of population health and reproduction at UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, and Elaine Ostrander, PhD, chief of the Cancer Genetics and Comparative Genomics Branch at the National Human Genome Research Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health. "So she convinced me we should study dog aging in a comparative way." "We always look at humans, but humans are kind of boring," he said. Ideker said it was Wang who first brought the dog idea to him. They don't translate to other species, perhaps not even to other people. Ideker and others have previously published epigenetic clocks for humans, but they are limited in that they may only be accurate for the specific individuals on whom the formulas were developed. The formula provides a new "epigenetic clock," a method for determining the age of a cell, tissue or organism based on a readout of its epigenetics - chemical modifications like methylation, which influence which genes are "off" or "on" without altering the inherited genetic sequence itself.Įpigenetic changes provide scientists with clues to a genome's age, Ideker said - much like wrinkles on a person's face provide clues to their age. "But how do you know if a product will truly extend your life without waiting 40 years or so? What if you could instead measure your age-associated methylation patterns before, during and after the intervention to see if it's doing anything?" Ideker led the study with first author Tina Wang, PhD, who was a graduate student in Ideker's lab at the time. "There are a lot of anti-aging products out there these days - with wildly varying degrees of scientific support," said senior author Trey Ideker, PhD, professor at UC San Diego School of Medicine and Moores Cancer Center. More than just a parlor trick, the researchers say it may provide a useful tool for veterinarians, and for evaluating anti-aging interventions. The new methylation-based formula, published July 2 in Cell Systems, is the first that is transferrable across species. Since the two species don't age at the same rate over their lifespans, it turns out it's not a perfectly linear comparison, as the 1:7 years rule-of-thumb would suggest. The formula is based on the changing patterns of methyl groups in dog and human genomes - how many of these chemical tags and where they're located - as they age. Instead, they created a formula that more accurately compares the ages of humans and dogs. If there's one myth that has persisted through the years without much evidence, it's this: multiply your dog's age by seven to calculate how old they are in "human years." In other words, the old adage says, a four-year-old dog is similar in physiological age to a 28-year-old person.īut a new study by researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine throws that out the window.
![animal age to human age animal age to human age](https://www.scienceabc.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Size-of-dog-age-compare-with-human-age..jpg)
Then trace your finger straight over to the left to find the corresponding human age. Image: To calculate your dog's age in 'human years' based on epigenetics, find the dog's age along the bottom axis and trace your finger straight up until you reach the red curve.