![]() As we go through those stages, our DNA also undergoes a change. We’re babies (or puppies), then kids (or, er, still puppies), then adolescents and then adults. “It slows down over time.” Explainer: What is epigenetics?įortunately, dogs and humans both hit very similar developmental milestones. ![]() “When you’re a newborn, your body is changing very quickly,” Pellegrini explains. Aging doesn’t even happen at the same pace over an individual’s life. This is because species develop at very different rates. A one-year-old dog is adult enough to have puppies of its own. After all, a one-year-old baby is just learning to walk. So, he notes, “It’s just dividing the human lifespan by the dog lifespan.”īut there are problems with that simple computation. On average, people live seven times longer than a dog. On the surface, he notes, multiplying by seven makes sense. He studies bioinformatics - a research field that uses computers to analyze biological data. Multiplying a dog’s age by seven doesn’t really work, says Matteo Pellegrini at the University of California, Los Angeles. Your dog’s actually more like a 53-year-old human. But that would probably be wrong, a new study shows. That would make your dog equivalent to a 28-year-old human. You might have heard that to get a dog’s “biological” age, just multiply its age in years by seven. At that age, a human would still be a kid. ![]() “I have a six-year-old dog - she still runs with me, but I’m now realizing that she’s not as ‘young’ as I thought she was,” Ideker is quoted as saying.How old is your dog? Maybe it was born four years ago. Researchers also believe that observing changes in the methylation patterns before and after the use of anti-aging products could help veterinarians make more informed decisions in terms of diagnostics and treatment.Ī graphic in the study makes the age comparisons intuitive and provides some helpful context for dog owners, including the scientists themselves. The new formula “is the first that is transferable across species,” and scientists plan to test their findings on other dog breeds to study the impact of longevity on their findings, according to a release. The rate of aging decreases after dogs turn 7. “This makes sense when you think about it - after all, a nine-month-old dog can have puppies, so we already knew that the 1:7 ratio wasn’t an accurate measure of age,” lead author Trey Ideker is quoted as saying.īased on the study, a one-year-old dog compares to a 30-year-old human, a four-year-old dog to a 52-year-old human. Tracking molecular changes in the DNA of Labrador retrievers, and in particular “the changing patterns of methyl groups” in their genome, according to a release, the study shows how dogs age at a much faster rate than humans early in their lives, then slow down after reaching maturity. Researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine have developed a new formula that takes into account that variance. And that’s because the scientists behind a new study say dogs and humans don’t age at the same rate. How do you compare a dog’s age to that of a person? A popular method says you should multiply the dog’s age by 7 to compute how old Fido is in “human years.”īut new research published Thursday in the Cell Systems journal debunks that method.
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