Research Paper Volume 17, Issue 3 pp 740—756
Epigenetic and accelerated age in captive olive baboons (Papio anubis), and relationships with walking speed and fine motor performance
- 1 The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Michale E. Keeling Center for Comparative Medicine and Research, National Center for Chimpanzee Care, TX 78602, USA
- 2 Texas State University, Department of Biology Supple Science Building, TX 78666, USA
- 3 Department of Ecology and Evolution and Marine Biology, Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, Neuroscience Research Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA
Received: April 10, 2024 Accepted: March 6, 2025 Published: March 18, 2025
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.206223How to Cite
Copyright: © 2025 Neal et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Epigenetic age, estimated by DNA methylation across the genome, reflects biological age. Accelerated age (i.e., an older methylation age than expected given chronological age) is an accepted aging biomarker in humans, showing robust associations with deleterious health outcomes, longevity, and mortality. However, data regarding age acceleration in nonhuman primates (NHPs), and relationships between NHP epigenetic age and behavioral indicators of aging, such as walking speed and fine motor performance, are sparse. We measured DNA methylation of 140 captive olive baboons (Papio anubis) (84% female, 3-20 years-old), estimated their epigenetic ages, and classified them as showing age acceleration or deceleration. We found that epigenetic age was strongly correlated with chronological age, and that approximately 27% of the sample showed age acceleration and 28% showed age deceleration. We subsequently examined relationships between epigenetic and accelerated age and walking speed (N=129) and fine motor performance (N=39). Older animals showed slower speeds and poorer motor performance. However, the difference between the epigenetic age and chronological age, referred to as delta age, was not a consistent predictor of walking speed or fine motor performance. These data highlight the need for further examination of age acceleration across NHP species, and the ways that age acceleration may (not) be related to indicators of aging in NHP models.
Abbreviations
NHP: nonhuman primate; MR: mother-reared; NR: nursery-reared; RBBS: reduced representation bisulfite sequencing; ANOVA: Analysis of Variance; ANCOVA: Analysis of Covariance; SD: Standard Deviation; SEM: Standard error of the mean; R2adj: R squared adjusted.