Boston University scientists have discovered the genetic marker that determines longevity in humans, according to the School of Public Health.

According to the SPH website, the team of scientists, led by Paola Sebastiani, a professor of biostatistics at SPH, and Thomas Perls, an associate professor at the School of Medicine, studied 1,055 centenarians, people over the age of 100.

Using data collected from the study, the team built a genetic model that could predict whether an individual would survive into his or her late 90s with 77 percent accuracy.

The scientists found that 90 percent of centenarians could be grouped into 19 different genetic “clusters.” The different clusters indicate who is more at risk for age-associated diseases, such as “dementia, hypertension and cardiovascular disease.”

The team also identified “the genetic signature with the highest proportion of longevity-associated genetic variants” in 45 percent of the centenarians aged 110 and older, the website stated.

MED’s New England Centenarian website specifies that the study focused on individuals at least 105 years of age, and also examined the participants’ siblings for similarities in their genetic makeup.

The study was further subdivided into an “offspring study” category, which examined the children of centenarians and their spouses, and a “neuropsychological study” category, which assessed the subjects’ cognitive functions, according to the website.

The team also analyzed the disease-associated variants each centenarian had and found that the presence of genetic variants associated with longevity is of more importance than the absence of disease-associated variants, the SPH website states.

The scientists said that their findings would suggest that, predicting disease risk using disease-associated variants may be inaccurate and potentially misleading, without more information about other genetic variants that could attenuate such risk.”

According to a report published by the scientific team in Science magazine on Thursday, “healthy aging is thought to reflect the combined influence of environmental factors (lifestyle choices) and genetic factors.”