> In this study, researchers developed highly precise tissue-specific clocks, capable of predicting age within about one year of an individual's chronological age.
So if all of this adversity related difference doesn't even throw off the chronological calculation of age by more than a year, how significant is it? Certainly there could be other effects beyond just aging, but is there any evidence of the actual effect size here?
Maybe colleges and scholarships that make admission decisions based on adversity can someday objectively measure it by DNA methylation. Also for reparations or welfare benefits. It would seem to be a more direct proxy than melanin pigment density.
But on the other hand, adversity does not equal disadvantage, and in fact the trials that leave those marks may bestow an advantage over their unstressed peers. Like released hatchery fish have ~10% of the survival rate of wild fish.
A low methylation score could be interpreted as a call to mature a child's tissues more rapidly by the curated application of adversity.
Maybe colleges can just accept the best students and do their job of educating them instead of arrogantly appointing themselves as saviors and righters of all wrongs in the world.
> released hatchery fish have ~10% of the survival rate of wild fish.
Is that inclusive of the entire egg->fry->fish cycle? I wouldn't be surprised if wild fish had extremely high "infant mortality" compared to hatchery fish
So if all of this adversity related difference doesn't even throw off the chronological calculation of age by more than a year, how significant is it? Certainly there could be other effects beyond just aging, but is there any evidence of the actual effect size here?