Human DNA methylation profiles have been used successfully to develop highly accurate biomarkers of aging (“epigenetic clocks”). Although these human epigenetic clocks are not immediately applicable to all species of the animal kingdom, the principles underpinning them appear to be conserved even in animals that are evolutionarily far removed from humans. This is exemplified by recent development of epigenetic clocks for mice and other mammalian species. Here, we describe epigenetic clocks for the domestic cat (Felis catus), based on methylation profiles of CpGs with flanking DNA sequences that are highly conserved between multiple mammalian species. Methylation levels of these CpGs are measured using a custom-designed Infinium array (HorvathMammalMethylChip40). From these, we present 3 epigenetic clocks for cats; of which, one applies only to blood samples from cats, while the remaining two dual-species human-cat clocks apply both to cats and humans. We demonstrate that these domestic cat clocks also lead to high age correlations in cheetahs, tigers, and lions. It is expected that these epigenetic clocks for cats possess the potential to be further developed for monitoring feline health as well as being used for identifying and validating anti-aging interventions.

人类 DNA 甲基化谱已成功用于开发高度准确的衰老生物标志物（“表观遗传时钟”）。尽管这些人类表观遗传时钟并不能立即适用于动物界的所有物种，但支撑它们的原理似乎即使在进化上与人类相距甚远的动物中也是保守的。最近针对小鼠和其他哺乳动物物种的表观遗传时钟的发展就证明了这一点。在这里，我们描述了家猫（ Felis catus ）的表观遗传时钟，其基于 CpG 的甲基化图谱，其侧翼 DNA 序列在多个哺乳动物物种之间高度保守。这些 CpG 的甲基化水平使用定制设计的 Infinium 阵列 (HorvathMammalMmethylChip40) 进行测量。由此，我们提出了猫的 3 个表观遗传时钟；其中，一个仅适用于猫的血液样本，而其余两个双物种人猫时钟既适用于猫又适用于人类。我们证明，这些家猫时钟也导致了猎豹、老虎和狮子的高年龄相关性。预计这些猫的表观遗传时钟具有进一步开发用于监测猫科动物健康以及用于识别和验证抗衰老干预措施的潜力。