These clocks are machine learning models that predict a person's age based on the global methylation state of their genome. What is undisputed is that these clo

These clocks are machine learning models that predict a person's age based on the global methylation state of their genome. What is undisputed is that these clocks predict with good accuracy. What is hotly contested is what biological meaning, if any, specific methylated loci have. These clocks are mainly being used for research, but one real-world application they are being used for is life insurance companies. If you are 60, but your methylome makes you appear 50, then you'll get a discount, as it is assumed that your health state will be closer to that of a 50-year-old. So if you have a systematically distorted methylome, and you want to buy life insurance, the clock could be good news or bad news for you, depending on how your mutation affects the clock readout. It used to be dogma that genomic hypomethylation occurs with age, or in other words, that methylation decreases as you age. It is now thought to be more complicated than that, but...if it is even partially true, that would imply that lower methylation levels would be associated with a higher age on the clock. So probably you would not get a discount, sadly.