3,138 men across training and validation, not a generic average
The science
How we learned to read your biology from a drop of saliva, and turn it into an age you can move.
Peer-reviewed by the founding clinical team
CLIA-certified lab, results in 4 weeks, no needles
The layer
Your DNA is the blueprint you were born with. Your epigenome is the control layer on top, chemical tags that sit at specific spots on your DNA called CpG sites and turn genes up, down or off as you live. We read those marks directly. Most tests only read your genotype and never measure the marks at all.
Your DNA · the library
Fixed for life.
The genetic code you inherited from your parents. Stable, the same in every cell, the full library you were born with. It carries your potential, but a library alone builds nothing.
Your epigenome · the reading instructions
Rewritten as you live.
Which books are open, which are bookmarked, which gather dust. Unlike your DNA it changes constantly with how you live, and unlike your DNA it is measurable.
DNA methylation
At each CpG site, a methyl tag can turn a gene down or off. Where the marks sit, and how strong they are, tells us which genes are running and which are quiet, and how a body is actually ageing.
Many methylation tests are really genotype tests. They read variants like MTHFR but never measure the marks. That is the difference between guessing someone’s weight by looking, and measuring it on calibrated scales.
What moves it
Unlike your DNA, your methylation changes across your whole life. Ten everyday forces quietly rewrite which of your genes are switched on.
Why it beats a blood test
Abloodtestreadsthemoment. ENGNEreadsthedirection.
A BLOOD TEST | THE MOMENT
BIOLOGICAL AGE (SINGLE SNAPSHOT)
Markers
Result: 34.0
Static Data Panel
A snapshot on one random day, graded against a mixed-sex range. It catches what’s acutely wrong right now, and you should still get one.
SALIVA | ENGNE IS THE DIRECTION
Trend Vector: -2.1 units/yr|Retest Frequency: Tri-annual
BIOLOGICAL AGE
Retest 1Retest 2Retest 3Retest 4Retest 5TODAYFUTURE DIRECTION
TIME
The trend underneath it, read as a man and retested over time. Not what’s wrong today, but where your body is heading, and what moves it.
What it reveals
Trouble,beforeyou feelit.
Because it reads the marks directly, one sample surfaces the things a standard panel misses until they are already a problem.
Biological ageing
How old your cells actually are, not the calendar.
Cellular health
How efficiently your body is maintaining itself.
Lifestyle impact
Which of your habits are helping, and which are hurting.
The problem
Almost every epigenetic clock, from Horvath's landmark model onward, was trained on mixed-sex or majority-female data. But male methylation follows its own trajectory. Plotted across a lifetime, the male line pulls away from the mixed-sex average right through the years that matter most. Even the direct predecessor to this clock, the Collins 2025 saliva clock, was trained on 3,408 people with no optimisation for male biology. That is the industry standard. ENGNE was built to move beyond it.
01
Training pool
Mixed-sex data goes in.
The prior saliva clock used 3,408 people with no optimisation for male biology.
Collins 2025 saliva clock
3,408 people · no male optimisation
02
Generic clock
One broad average is created.
Male and female patterns are compressed into one reference model.
The biological differences are smoothed out.
03
Model output
The male signal gets flattened.
The generic result keeps the average and loses the signals that matter in men.
PerformanceRecoveryInflammationMetabolic
That gap is the signal. A generic clock averages it away.
Ages 30 to 60, the window that matters. Where male signals for performance, recovery, inflammation and metabolic health show up most clearly.
The reference line. A generic model smooths these signals into a broad average, and clarity is lost.
Why the line diverges
Male ageing is driven at the molecular level by systems that behave differently from women. Build the clock around them, and it reads what a generic model smooths over.
5systems
Male ageing
Testosterone and androgen signalling
Cellular repair processes
Immune system activity
Metabolic regulation
Training, stress and environment
Testosterone and androgen signalling
Cellular repair processes
Immune system activity
Metabolic regulation
Training, stress and environment
The clock
AlphaAge is a saliva methylation clock on 285 CpG sites, trained and tested on 3,138 men using the Illumina EPIC 850k array. It reads male biology at R² 0.88. The same clock reads women at 0.775, and that gap is the whole point: it is tuned to a signal that is specifically male.
01The first epigenetic clock built on purely male data
0.88
R² on men.
285 CpG sites.
On women it drops to 0.775.
AlphaAge validation matrix
Male-trained methylation clock
Epigenetics lets us see ageing written into the genome. Until now, every clock treated male and female biology as interchangeable. AlphaAge was designed to change that, built for male health, with deeper insight into performance, recovery, longevity and biological age.
Predicted vs actual
Your chronological age is fixed. Your biological age is what your cells say, and it moves with how you live. AlphaAge plots one against the other, and reads across four signals at once.
Four biological signals
Chronological
42
Fixed.
Age difference
−3years
Biological
39
Moves with you.
Calendar time
Cellular state
The research
AlphaAge is a third-generation methylation clock, designed and published by Christopher Collins. Here is the study behind it.
AlphaAge
A male-specific epigenetic clock
285 CpG sites, saliva, trained on male biology
ORCID 0000-0003-2850-1950 Illumina EPIC 850k
01
Objective
Objective
- Build a saliva clock on male biology alone
- Test whether male focus improves prediction
- Find sex-specific methylation differences
02
Method
Method
- 1,041 men in training
- 2,097 men in test, ages 18 to 86
- 285 CpG sites, EWAS p < 1×10−8
- Linear-regression clock
03
Results
Results
- R² 0.88 on men, 0.775 on women
- ~4.46 year prediction error
- Strong male calibration
04
Conclusion
Conclusion
- Direct methylation signal of ageing
- Sex-specific differences confirmed
- Male-focused clock is more relevant
Study output
The signal, on a chart.
Predicted age tracks true age tightly across the male cohort, and the consumer analysis shows how the reading translates into the readouts you see in the app.
Consumer analysis
From data to a number you can use.
The same methylation signal is translated into your biological age, organ ages and resilience score, the readouts that drive your plan.
Biological age
39
Organ ages
Resilience score
