7. The clock catalogue

pyaging’s registry is the most complete machine-readable inventory in existence: at commit e7267e9, 177 clocks with curated provenance (pyaging clock_metadata.json), backed by an evidence ledger of 6 author-confirmed, 332 code-confirmed, 2,435 paper-confirmed and 59 supplement-confirmed field assignments. This chapter describes that registry; FALCONAge’s own catalogue of 178 clocks is in the clock catalogue.

7.1 Distributions

Counted from pyaging’s clock_metadata.json at commit e7267e9 (177 clocks).

Data type. DNA methylation 156, histone modification 8, transcriptomics 6, clinical biomarkers 5, chromatin accessibility 2.

Species. Homo sapiens 157, multiple species 11, Mus musculus 7, C. elegans 1, human and mouse 1.

Platform. Illumina 450K 92, EPIC 87, 27K 13, MammalMethylChip40 10, ChIP-seq 8, RNA-seq 6, clinical laboratory assays 5, RRBS 3, expression microarray 3, mammalian methylation array 2, MammalMethylChip320 2, ATAC-seq 2, bisulfite sequencing 2, targeted bisulfite sequencing 1.

Model type. Elastic net 66, LASSO 18, reference-based constrained deconvolution 18, PCA + elastic net 18, PCA + elastic net + ARD 8, linear regression 5, weighted linear score 3, causality-weighted elastic net 3, and two each of logistic regression, single-CpG score, PCA + Cox, Klemera–Doubal composite, mean methylation aggregation, dynamic methylation transmission, elastic net Cox, 95th-percentile aggregation and PCA. One each of: deep neural network, Cox proportional hazards, elastic net Cox ensemble, bootstrap-stabilised elastic net, complement of mean methylation, two-stage elastic net + Cox, feature-selected logistic, Mahalanobis distance composite, mean aggregation, two-stage elastic net, ridge logistic, orthologue-transferred ridge logistic, penalised hazards with Gompertz calibration, Gompertz hazards with age calibration, weighted methylation aggregation, ridge, elastic net logistic, quadratically calibrated elastic net, screened elastic net and BLUP.

Unit. Years 86, proportion 20, unitless 18, pg/mL 7, beta value 6, weeks 6, months 4, probability 3, and two each of biological years per chronological year, days, cell divisions per stem cell, pack-years, ratio, log odds, population doublings and log hazard. One each of hours, passages, m/s, kg, mL/kg/min, kb, relative age, ln(%), ln(mg/L), units per week and bp.

Population. Adults 78, older adults 29, all ages 27, multiple mammalian species 11, human age unspecified 7, mice 6, newborns 4, human cell cultures 4, pregnancies 4, and one each of C. elegans, centenarians, humans and mice, children and adolescents, adult men, prenatal and newborn, and children.

7.2 Selected clocks with their key parameters

The full 177-row table is in the registry; this is the subset a new tool should support first, sorted by likely usage.

Clock Year Layer Features Model Predicts Unit Notes
horvath2013 2013 DNAm multi-tissue 353 elastic net CA years anti_log_linear; the reference clock
hannum 2013 DNAm blood 71 elastic net CA years
lin 2016 DNAm blood 99 linear CA years intercept 12.2169841
skinandblood 2018 DNAm skin/blood/fibroblast 391 elastic net CA years most accurate first-gen across tissues
phenoage 2018 clinical chem 10 Gompertz-calibrated penalised hazards phenotypic age years see §5.1
dnamphenoage 2018 DNAm blood 513 elastic net phenotypic age years
zhangen 2019 DNAm blood/saliva 514 elastic net CA years per-sample z-score
zhangblup 2019 DNAm 319,607 BLUP CA years per-sample z-score
grimage 2019 DNAm blood 1,032 2-stage EN + Cox mortality years 8 sub-clocks
grimage2 2022 DNAm blood 1,032 EN Cox mortality years 10 sub-clocks (+logCRP, +logA1C)
dunedinpoam38 2020 DNAm blood 46 elastic net pace bio-y/chron-y
dunedinpace 2022 DNAm blood 20,000 (173 scoring) elastic net pace bio-y/chron-y quantile norm required
altumage 2022 DNAm multi-tissue 20,318 DNN CA years 5 hidden layers, SELU
pchorvath2013 / pchannum / pcphenoage / pcgrimage / pcskinandblood / pcdnamtl 2022 DNAm 78,464 (78,466 for PCGrimAge) PCA + EN various years / bp high test-retest ICC
hrsinchphenoage 2022 DNAm blood 959 weighted linear score phenotypic age years
yingcausage / yingdamage / yingadaptage 2024 DNAm blood 585 / 1,089 / 999 causality-weighted EN CA / damage / adaptation years MR-filtered CpGs
dnamfitage 2023 DNAm blood 630 Klemera–Doubal composite fitness bio-age years sex-specific
dnamtl 2019 DNAm blood 140 elastic net telomere length kb
stemtoc 2024 DNAm multi-tissue 371 0.95-quantile aggregation mitotic age beta
epitoc1 / epitoc2 / epitoc3 2016/2020/2020 DNAm 385 / 163 / 170 mean / transmission model mitotic age beta / divisions per stem cell
systemsage + 11 system variants 2025 DNAm blood 125,175 PCA + EN 11 system ages + composite years
cpgptgrimage3 2024 DNAm-derived proxies 24 Cox mortality/bio-age years needs CpGPT + GrimAge2 proxies
cpgptpcgrimage3 2024 DNAm-derived proxies 31 PCA + Cox mortality/bio-age years
intrinclock 2024 DNAm multi-tissue 380 2-stage EN CA years stable across immune cell types
encen40 / encen100 2023 DNAm blood/saliva/buccal 559 / 198 elastic net CA years centenarian-tuned
retroelementagev1/v2 2024 DNAm blood 1,317 / 1,378 elastic net CA years retroelement-focused
senchronoage / sencultureage / senmortalityage 2026 DNAm 187 / 142 / 91 EN / EN-logistic / EN-Cox CA / senescence / mortality years / log-odds / log-hazard newest human clocks in the registry
pasta / reg 2025 transcriptomics multi-tissue 8,113 ridge-logistic / ridge transcriptomic age years rank-normalised
bitage 2021 transcriptomics C. elegans 576 elastic net bio age hours binarised
ocampoatac1/2 2023 ATAC-seq PBMC 228 / 380 elastic net CA years
camillo* (8 marks) 2025 histone ChIP-seq 102–3,739 PCA + EN + ARD CA years
mammalian1/2/3 + blood/skin variants 2023 DNAm mammalian array 335–2,572 elastic net CA years species lookup required
petkovich / stubbs / meer / thompson 2017–18 DNAm mouse 90 / 17,992 / 435 / 582 elastic net CA months / days RRBS or bisulfite-seq
deconvolute* (6 + 12 cell) 2018 / 2022 DNAm EPIC 600 / 240 constrained deconvolution cell proportions proportion
xchrom / ychrom 2021 DNAm 4,047 / 284 PCA sex chromosome dosage unitless
mccartney* (10) 2018 DNAm blood 204–1,109 LASSO lifestyle/clinical traits various smoking, BMI, alcohol, lipids, education, WHR, body fat
knight / bohlin / mayne / lee×3 / epicga 2016–2021 DNAm cord blood/placenta 62–558 EN / LASSO gestational age weeks
pedbe / wu 2019–2020 DNAm buccal/blood 94 / 111 EN CA in children years
corticalclock / neusin / gliasin 2020 / 2024 DNAm brain cortex 347 / 672 / 220 EN CA years
ctsliver / hep / hepatoxu 2017–2024 DNAm liver / cfDNA 90 / 70 / 10 LASSO / logistic CA / HCC years / unitless
cvdwesterman / adbahadosingh / prostatecancerkirby / depressionbarbu / downsyndrome 2017–2021 DNAm blood 235 / 4 / 3 / 196 / 652 disease risk models disease probability or score probability / log odds / unitless
dnamfili / dnamic / dnamstress 2022–2025 DNAm blood 20 / 91 / 211 LASSO / EN frailty / intrinsic capacity / stress unitless
replitali / replitalinorm / cellpopage 2022–2024 DNAm cultured cells 87 / 218 / 42 EN replicative history population doublings / passages

7.3 Clocks outside pyaging worth supporting

  • organAging - 24 organ panels × {chronological, mortality} × {full Olink 3072, feature-reduced Olink 1536, CSF}. Coefficients ship as CSVs in the repo.
  • tAge - 60 transcriptomic models (§4.18).
  • SpatialAgingClock - 18 mouse brain cell types (§4.13).
  • scImmuAging - 5 human PBMC cell types (CD4T, CD8T, MONO, NK, B), glmnet objects with lambda.min, applied to pseudocells.
  • SCALE - >20 mouse tissues, Tabula Muris Senis.
  • CellBiAge - mouse brain snRNA/scRNA binary classifiers.
  • scAge / scEpiAge - single-cell methylation.
  • OMICmAge - 421 epigenetic biomarker proxies (110 protein, 286 metabolite, 25 clinical) distilled into a DNAm-only predictor of EMRAge. Discovery MGB Aging Biobank n = 3,451; validation TruDiagnostic n = 14,213 and Generation Scotland n = 18,672.
  • GOLD BioAge / GOLD ProtAge / GOLD MetAge / Light BioAge - Gompertz-law clinical, proteomic, metabolomic, and 3-marker variants (Adv Sci 12(32), 2025); benchmarked on NHANES and UK Biobank.
  • StackAge - UKB proteomics + metabolomics ensemble, n = 30,376.
  • Oh 2023 organ clocks - SomaScan, ~5,700 people, organage Python package.
  • GP-age - Gaussian process regression on 30 CpGs selected by k-means over 80 age-correlated sites; MedAE 2.1 y, 11,910 blood samples.
  • RNAAgeCalc - cross-tissue and tissue-specific GTEx transcriptomic ages (R/Bioconductor, Python racpy, Shiny).
  • MEAT - muscle epigenetic age test (Bioconductor).
  • MiAge - mitotic age; coefficients ship in ComputAge.
  • GlycanAge, IMM-AGE, microbiome clocks.

Of the clocks outside pyaging, FALCONAge now scores MetaboAge and MetaboHealth (NMR metabolomics), LinAge2 and cAge; OMICmAge is catalogued as licensed.