Cross-species epigenomic signatures of exceptional longevity: Insights from Jonathan the Giant Tortoise and human centenarians

Human centenarians (age 110+ years) show significantly higher global methylation entropy than adults aged 60–82 years, indicating an age-linked epigenomic shift in PBMCs.

• Why it matters: The study addresses whether epigenomic markers of exceptional longevity can be conserved across evolutionarily distant species, rather than being limited to one organism or tissue type.
• What they did: It compares a previously published Jonathan, a 194-year-old Geochelone gigantea, buccal scrape and saliva epigenomic analysis with public DNA methylation data from human PBMCs, focusing on global methylation entropy and promoter methylation entropy profiles.
• The result: In humans, 12 candidate genes show a distinctive promoter methylation entropy pattern with lower values at the youngest and oldest ages than intermediate groups, and these genes are enriched for telomere-related processes, supporting cross-species, testable longevity hypotheses.

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