Dear Colleagues,

Recent studies indicate that epigenetics, specifically DNA methylation, plays a crucial role in healthy aging, chronic conditions, and age-related diseases including cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and mental disorders. Two main mechanisms contribute to age-related DNA methylation changes: ‘epigenetic drift’ and ‘epigenetic clocks’. Epigenetic clocks are a small set of CpGs in the human genome useful for estimating the biological age and overall state of health of an individual. The literature distinguishes between first-generation clocks, which are trained on chronological age only, and second-generation clocks, which are trained on age and a set of biological measures that in turn are associated with health status and longevity. In contrast, epigenetic drift is a mechanism that involves the whole genome, suggesting a global dysregulation of DNA methylation patterns with age. Two critical aspects of epigenetic drift are genomic instability and chromatin deterioration during aging, leading to an accumulation of epigenetic mutations (‘epimutations’), i.e., changes in gene activity not involving DNA mutations but rather a gain or loss of DNA methyl groups, which are conserved in cells during mitosis.

Investigation in this field may help us to identify diagnostic and prognostic disease biomarkers (possibly non-invasively using blood samples), molecular mechanisms responsible for the development of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and mental diseases, and possible therapeutic targets.

Prof. Giovanni Fiorito
Guest Editor

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• epigenetics
• DNA methylation
• diagnostic biomarkers
• prognostic biomarkers
• age-related diseases
• therapeutic targets.