TY - JOUR T1 - Multi-tissue methylation clocks for age estimation in the common bottlenose dolphin JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/2021.05.03.442523 SP - 2021.05.03.442523 AU - Todd R. Robeck AU - Zhe Fei AU - Amin Haghani AU - Joseph A. Zoller AU - Caesar Z. Li AU - Karen J. Steinman AU - Stacy DiRocco AU - Lydia Staggs AU - Todd Schmitt AU - Steve Osborn AU - Gisele Montano AU - Magdalena Rodriguez AU - Steve Horvath Y1 - 2021/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/05/04/2021.05.03.442523.abstract N2 - Accurate identification of individual ages within wild bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) is critical for determining population health and the development of population management strategies. As such, we analyzed DNA methylation patterns by applying a custom methylation array (HorvathMammalMethyl40) to both blood (n = 140) and skin samples (n = 87) from known age or approximate age (0 to 57 years) bottlenose dolphins. We present three bottlenose dolphin specific age estimation clocks using combined blood and skin (48 CpGs, R = 0.93, median absolute error = 2.13 years), blood only (64 CpGs, R = 0.97, error= 1.46 years) and skin only (39 CpGs, R = 0.95, error= 2.53). Our sex estimator based on 71 CpGs predicts the sex of any odontocete species with 99.5% accuracy. We characterize individual cytosines that correlate with sex and age in dolphins.The presented epigenetic clocks are expected to be useful for conservation efforts and for studying anthropogenic events.Competing Interest StatementSH is a founder of the non-profit Epigenetic Clock Development Foundation which plans to license several of his patents from his employer UC Regents. The other authors declare no conflicts of interest. ER -