You are right. In the same issue there is also a paper from Andreas Beyer’s team on the effects of aging on faster error-prone transcription in several species.

You are right. In the same issue there is also a paper from Andreas Beyer’s team on the effects of aging on faster error-prone transcription in several species. Age-related difference (interpreted naturally as transcription errors) cut out the wrong pieces of precursor mRNAs and this can lead to RNAs and circular RNAs in the cytoplasm. Not to mention strange mRNA isoforms. Probably not a good thing. K. Mozhui and others have shown an increase is epigenetic noise with age in mice and there is similar work in “wild” human cohorts. But the key questions in all of this work are—-What is causal? What is just consequence? The multiple flows of causality is a very tricky problem. Genetic variants are the most obvious candidates once environmental factors (radiation exposure, toxins, diet) are reduced or standardized in a well controlled laboratory environment.