From Genome to Exposome
Why the Future of Longevity Isn’t Just in Your DNA
I’ve spent enough time paying attention to health futurists to know most are chasing the same shiny prize: the perfect biomarker, the next breakthrough molecule, the AI that decodes your biology better than your mother ever could.
But here’s a twist Tina Woods wants us to see:
What if the real breakthroughs don’t start in a petri dish—but in your neighborhood? In your air quality, your community dynamics, your chronic stress levels, your fridge?
What if the future of human flourishing isn’t encoded in your genome at all… but in your exposome?
What’s Been Missing
The exposome is everything that happens to you from conception onward—every molecule inhaled, every bite eaten, every stress endured, every relationship sustained, every invisible factor shaping your biology over time.
Unlike your genome, which is relatively fixed, the exposome is dynamic and personal. It’s the sum total of your lived experience.
Recent work published in Nature Medicine confirms: exposomic factors account for up to 10x more variance in mortality risk than genetics. It's the smoking gun in the mystery of healthspan.
Genetics loads the gun. The exposome pulls the trigger.
Exposome Moonshot(s)
After the Human Genome Project came and went—astonishing in its ambition, modest in its clinical returns—a new movement has begun to form.
Enter the Human Exposome Project.
This isn’t just another research initiative. It’s a moonshot. A global scientific endeavor to comprehensively map how our environments affect our health over a lifetime.
Tina Woods sits on the steering committee of the Exposome Moonshot Forum, launched to define and deliver this next-generation project. In May 2025, delegates from over 30 countries met in Washington D.C. to lay the groundwork for what may become the most ambitious health initiative since the decoding of DNA.
In December 2024, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) proposed the creation of a National Exposome Project (NEP)—a $10 billion, 20-year public-private initiative to systematically map human exposure to the ~80,000 chemicals Americans encounter regularly.
The NEP aims to:
Generate benchmark exposure levels for environmental chemicals.
Use AI and machine learning to analyze complex environmental data.
Inform the development of new medicines and preventative healthcare strategies.
This initiative recognizes that while genetics has advanced our understanding of disease, environmental exposures play a significant role in many conditions, including autoimmune diseases and neuro-degenerative disorders.
Why It Starts in Early Life
One of the most compelling branches of exposome research is HELIX: the Human Early-Life Exposome Project.
Operating across six European countries, HELIX integrates environmental exposure data from pregnancy and childhood with physical, cognitive, and developmental health outcomes. It uses wearable monitors, air quality sensors, dietary logs, and biological samples to understand how early-life exposures may forecast disease decades later.
It's a model of the kind of research we need more of: longitudinal, life-course-based, and deeply integrative.
Cities, Communities, and Clinics as Living Labs
This is where Tina’s work comes in. She argues that longevity breakthroughs won’t emerge solely from the lab, but from real-life settings.
Her “City of Longevity” initiative, launched with the UK’s National Innovation Centre for Aging, brings together urban planners, technologists, and healthcare providers to pilot exposomic interventions at the community level.
Seventeen cities—including Beijing, Buenos Aires, and Newcastle—have joined so far, exploring how everything from housing to public transit can be optimized for longer, healthier lives.
Add to this the rise of longevity clinics around the world, and we suddenly have the test beds we need for decentralized trials, personalized interventions, and exposome-aware healthcare delivery.
The consumer longevity space is booming—but uneven. Some clinics offer rigorous, biomarker-based programs; others sell hope in a capsule.
That’s why the International Institute of Longevity is now leading efforts to standardize longevity medicine, focusing on:
Evidence-based protocols
Biomarker validation (especially functional biomarkers)
Psychological and behavioral coaching
Data security and ethical oversight
The goal? A coherent, global ecosystem where “longevity as a service” is safe, personalized, and effective—not just sexy branding on a blood test.
Who Owns the Data?
A crucial component of exposome research is data—big, messy, sensitive data.
Tina proposes a bold solution: Personal Exposome Wallets.
Think of it like a secure, citizen-controlled data bank. Your sleep, step count, diet logs, air quality exposure, blood work, and mood trackers all stored and owned by you. You decide what to share, when, and with whom—whether it’s your physician, an app, or a global research project.
Incentives could be monetary, service-based, or altruistic (e.g., contributing to global aging research). The key principle: reciprocity and control.
This could dismantle the old business model of hoarding data for commercial gain—and replace it with one rooted in open science and individual empowerment.
But What About the Downsides?
Too much data can backfire.
Wearables that constantly tell you you’re sleeping poorly? That your heart rate is “off”? That your biological age is older than your passport suggests?
It can spike anxiety—especially if you feel powerless to change it.
Tina’s view: data must be contextualized and supported by coaching, education, and psychological care. The best clinics already integrate this, helping clients navigate the emotional side of optimization.
Because longevity isn’t just biological. It’s relational, emotional, existential.
What About the Global South?
Exposome science must not be a rich-world luxury.
In fact, its success depends on inclusion.
The majority of the world’s population lives in regions underrepresented in biomedical data. If we want a full picture of human health, we need environmental and biological data from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and beyond.
Mobile-based tracking, open-source tools, and localized research hubs can make this possible. And if exposome science delivers, it could help these nations avoid the chronic disease epidemics that have crippled Western economies.
It’s not just ethical. It’s strategic.
If you're looking for the future of health, don’t just watch the clinic. Watch the city.
Watch the supermarket. The schoolyard. The sidewalk. The housing project. The rave.
Your exposome is shaping your biology right now—and it always has been.
So maybe it’s time we stopped treating health as a private crisis, and started seeing it as a public, systemic, planetary opportunity.
The Human Genome Project told us what we are.
The Human Exposome Project might show us what we could be.
Want to get involved with the Human Exposome Project?
Visit: humanexposomeproject.com
Learn more about the global effort: exposomemoonshot.org
Explore IHEN's initiatives: humanexposome.net
Read about the U.S. National Exposome Project proposal: fas.org/publication/creating-a-national-exposome-project/