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Summary Scientists developed a process to determine age with the help of saliva.
Scientists developed a process that allows them to accurately predict a persons age without knowing anything about them and using only a small sample of their saliva.“The big shock to me was that we can predict someones age based on just a saliva sample to an accuracy of 5 years,” says the studys first author. “Right now there’s really absolutely nothing that you can say from a DNA sample that you find, lets say, on a crime scene. So it’s a big deal.”The researchers discovered this method to gauge age using saliva by accident. UCLA professor of human genetics and paediatrics Dr. Eric Vilain and his colleagues originally set out to study whether sexual orientation could be determined by changes in the DNA. They collected saliva samples from 34 pairs of identical male twins ages 21 to 55, where one was straight and one was gay.The researchers studied a process called methylation - a chemical modification of one of the four building blocks that make up our DNA.After replicating their findings in a sample of the general population aged 18 to 70, the scientists were able to build a precise predictive model.
