RESEARCH ARTICLE Castration delays epigenetic aging and feminizes DNA methylation at androgen- regulated loci Victoria J Sugrue1, Joseph Alan Zoller2, Pritika Narayan3, Ake T Lu4, Oscar J Ortega-Recalde1, Matthew J Grant3, C Simon Bawden5, Skye R Rudiger5, Amin Haghani4, Donna M Bond1, Reuben R Hore6, Michael Garratt1, Karen E Sears7, Nan Wang8, Xiangdong William Yang8,9, Russell G Snell3, Timothy A Hore1†*, Steve Horvath4†* 1Department of Anatomy, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand; 2Department of Biostatistics, Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, United States; 3Applied Translational Genetics Group, School of Biological Sciences, Centre for Brain Research, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand; 4Department of Human Genetics, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, United States; 5Livestock and Farming Systems, South Australian Research and Development Institute, Roseworthy, Australia; 6Blackstone Hill Station, Becks, RD2, Omakau, New Zealand; 7Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, UCLA, Los Angeles, United States; 8Center for Neurobehavioral Genetics, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles, United States; 9Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, United States *For correspondence: Abstract In mammals, females generally live longer than males. Nevertheless, the mechanisms
[email protected] (TAH); underpinning sex-dependent longevity are currently unclear. Epigenetic clocks are powerful
[email protected] (SH) biological biomarkers capable of precisely estimating chronological age and identifying novel †These authors contributed factors influencing the aging rate using only DNA methylation data. In this study, we developed the equally to this work first epigenetic clock for domesticated sheep (Ovis aries), which can predict chronological age with a median absolute error of 5.1 months.