The gap can be tested by treating age-linked CpG drift as an upstream driver rather than a passive correlate. If true, perturbing locus-specific epigenome editing should shift cell-sorted methylomes before downstream neurodegeneration markers change.
Curated pathway from expert analysis
flowchart TD
A["Age-Linked CpG Drift<br/>Progressive Hypomethylation"]
B["DNMT1 Maintenance Failure<br/>Replication-Linked Fidelity Loss"]
C["Transposon Derepression<br/>LINE-1 and IAP Silencing Loss"]
D["cGAS-STING Innate Sensing<br/>Cytosolic DNA Detection"]
E["Heterochromatin Erosion<br/>H3K9me3 and H3K27me3 Loss"]
F["SASP Cytokine Secretion<br/>Senescence-Associated Phenotype"]
G["Glial Identity Drift<br/>Microglia and Astrocyte Dysregulation"]
A --> B
A --> C
B --> E
C --> D
D --> F
E --> G
F --> G
style A fill:#1a237e,stroke:#4fc3f7,color:#4fc3f7
style D fill:#7b1fa2,stroke:#ce93d8,color:#ce93d8
style F fill:#b71c1c,stroke:#ef9a9a,color:#ef9a9a
style G fill:#b71c1c,stroke:#ef9a9a,color:#ef9a9a

No curated PDB or AlphaFold mapping for AGE-LINKED yet. Search RCSB →
No clinical trials data linked to this hypothesis yet.
No curated ClinVar variants loaded for this hypothesis.
Run scripts/backfill_clinvar_variants.py to fetch P/LP/VUS variants.
No DepMap CRISPR Chronos data found for age-linked CpG drift.
Run python3 scripts/backfill_hypothesis_depmap.py to populate.
No resource usage or linked notebooks recorded for this hypothesis yet.
| Prediction | Predicted | Observed | Status | Conf |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IF CpG drift is protective adaptation, THEN blocking drift at stress-responsive loci will increase neuronal stress-death by >=20% under oxidative challenge within 14 days. | Drift blockade increases oxidative-stress cell death >=20% versus non-targeting controls. | — no observation — | pending | 0.47 |
| IF age-linked CpG drift is pathological rather than protective, THEN reversing top drift CpGs in aged human neurons will improve synaptic activity by >=20% within 21 days. | Epigenome reversal of drift CpGs increases multielectrode-array firing synchrony or synaptic marker expression by >=20%. | — no observation — | pending | 0.53 |