US researchers said on Thursday they can use saliva samples to predict a person’s age, a discovery that could help CSI investigators track down suspects,criminals and also to open the door to personalized medicine.
Using this process called methylation, a chemical modification of one of the 4 building blocks that compose human DNA, scientists at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), were able to determine a person’s age to within 5 years.
“With just a saliva sample, we can accurately predict a person’s age without knowing anything else about them,” told Dr. Eric Vilain, the director of the Center for Society and Genetics at UCLA.
