One thing I am pretty confident about is that methylation patterns are downstream, not upstream. Methyl group turnover time is far too fast to be a plausible root cause of aging. (In principle, there could be some special methyl groups which turn over slowly, but I would find that very surprising.)
My possibly wrong understanding here is that there are histone modifications and other proteins (like CTCF) that make methylation patterns way more stable? Which leads to some methylation patterns like imprinting for genes like IGF2 to be stable in most tissues over ~decades. Nevertheless, loss of imprinting and epigenetic marks still doesn’t necessarily seem like the most likely root cause of aging to me.
My possibly wrong understanding here is that there are histone modifications and other proteins (like CTCF) that make methylation patterns way more stable? Which leads to some methylation patterns like imprinting for genes like IGF2 to be stable in most tissues over ~decades. Nevertheless, loss of imprinting and epigenetic marks still doesn’t necessarily seem like the most likely root cause of aging to me.