CHANGE: How Aging Is Recorded In Our Genes. “Recent research suggests that changes in DNA methylation patterns as a person gets older may contribute to human diseases for which risk increases with age, including cancer. To get a better idea of how methylation patterns change with age, a team led by Manel Esteller, an epigenetics researcher at the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute in Barcelona, Spain, looked at two extreme cases: A newborn male baby and a man aged 103 years.”