Data characteristics and characteristics of aVMPs. a Sample description per biobank. b Distribution of age in the samples used. c Example of an age-independent CpG site where the DNA methylation does not change in age or variance with age near NOC2L. d Example of an aDMP, with an average change in DNA methylation but not variance near BMI1. e Overlap between aVMPs and frequently identified aDMPs and CpGs in Horvath’s ageing clock [24]. f Heatmap of Z-score of individuals (columns) versus young individuals (<30 years) of all 6366 aVMPs (rows). g Correlation between individuals (y-axis) for each of the age groups in our study (x-axis). The blue curve is a loess smoothed curve. (TIF 4010 kb)