It all started with a string of people telling me how I looked younger than my age. Shaving my beard didn’t help either.
Then a friend was mocking me on how childish I appears on some of my last photos. And was jocking I might be affected by a mutation on Klotho-related genes.
What the fuck is that? Turns out it really exist, and there’s a SNP tied to that hormone and called rs9536314 .
Luckily, it is a SNP covered by the first generation of 23andMe chips. Having downloaded the raw data a while back, it is a matter of installing the Python arv package:
$ pip install arv
Collecting arv
Downloading arv-0.9.2-cp27-none-macosx_10_12_intel.whl (92kB)
100% |████████████████████████████████| 102kB 10kB/s
Collecting cython>=0.25 (from arv)
Downloading Cython-0.25.2-cp27-cp27m-macosx_10_6_intel.macosx_10_9_intel.macosx_10_9_x86_64.macosx_10_10_intel.macosx_10_10_x86_64.whl (4.1MB)
100% |████████████████████████████████| 4.1MB 201kB/s
Installing collected packages: cython, arv
Successfully installed arv-0.9.2 cython-0.25.2
Let’s now find out about that SNP:
>>> from arv import load
>>> genome = load("kev_full_genome.txt")
>>> genome["rs9536314"]
<SNP: chromosome=13 position=33628138 genotype=<Genotype 'GT'>>
>>>
Bingo! With the GT variant, I’m supposed to have higher plasma klotho concentration. Which is, according to some studies , reported to:
affect longevity in mice,
associated with greater brain cortical volume,
show lower less decline with age on standardized cognitive tests,
score better on some Alzheimer’s disease tests.
As usual all these studies are preliminary and should be taken with a huge grain of salt.
But my friend’s diagnostic was right. My dear friend, you made my day and I owe you a mojito! ;)
And thanks Mom and Dad for your DNA! :)