What is PCPhenoAge (Levine PhenoAge Epigenetic Clock)?
PCPhenoAge is a second-generation epigenetic biological age clock developed by Morgan Levine and colleagues, calibrated against clinical biomarker-defined phenotypic age rather than chronological age alone — making it more predictive of physiological status and disease risk than first-generation methylation clocks such as the Horvath pan-tissue clock. It is derived from principal-component analysis of DNA methylation patterns at a curated set of CpG sites, designed to capture the component of DNA methylation variability most informative for phenotypic ageing. DNA methylation — the addition of methyl groups to cytosine residues at CpG dinucleotides — is a stable epigenetic mark regulated by diet, environment, lifestyle, and biological ageing processes. The EPIC array platform used by TruDiagnostic quantifies methylation at approximately 850,000 CpG sites genome-wide.