Fathers pass on four times as many new genetic mutations as mothers

Coriolan

Coriolan

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I read about this before but it's the first time I see a quantified study. This should greatly encourage people to have children earlier.

Fathers pass on four times as many new genetic mutations as mothers – study


"Children inherit four times as many new mutations from their fathers than their mothers, according to research that suggests faults in the men’s DNA are a driver for rare childhood diseases.

Researchers studied 14,000 Icelanders and found that men passed on one new mutation for every eight months of age, compared with women who passed on a new mutation for every three years of age.

The figures mean that a child born to 30-year-old parents would, on average, inherit 11 new mutations from the mother, but 45 from the father.

Kari Stefansson, a researcher at the Icelandic genetics company, deCODE, which led the study, said that while new mutations led to variation in the human genome, which is necessary for evolution to happen, “they are also believed to be responsible for the majority of cases of rare diseases in childhood.”

Scientists know from previous research that children born to older fathers have a greater risk of developing certain disorders, including intellectual disabilities, autism and schizophrenia. New mutations are a likely factor, given that more genes are active in the brain than in any other organ in the body."
 
Study was done in Iceland with Icelander. Isolated, small place, small population. Did they check if the parents were related?
 
Makes you wonder if the traditional inheritance of the oldest son in history might be linked to this phenomenon.
 
There is an eighty year old guy who's father was 80 when he had him and who's grandfather was an American president that is still alive today. If an elderly man has a child with a young women the children are almost always healthy and live completely normal lives. This study isn't really relevant

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This has been studied in many countries and the results are always the same. The older the father, the higher the incidence of genetic disease. There seems to be little doubt about it. The only difference with this study is that it explains the mechanism in a certain type of genetic disease.

This article in a publication from Stanford gives a nice explanation, and suggests that part of the increase in autism in the U.S. may stem from it.

http://genetics.thetech.org/older-dads’-kids-higher-risk-genetic-disease

Other studies:
http://time.com/10539/more-bad-news-for-older-dads-increased-risk-of-kids-with-mental-illness/

" Most of the previous investigations compared younger fathers and their children to different older fathers and their offspring. “That’s comparing apples and oranges,” says D’Onofrio. “We know young fathers and old fathers vary on many things.” So his team turned to birth registry data from Sweden and compared children born to the same fathers, evaluating the siblings on various mental health and academic measures. The study included 2.6 million children born to 1.4 million fathers.What they found surprised them – so much so that they spent about two months re-evaluating the data to make sure their numbers were correct. While the previous genetic study found that an older father’s DNA may account for about 15% of autism cases, D’Onofrio’s group found that the increased risk for children of fathers older than 45 years soared to 3.5 times compared to that of younger fathers. Children of older fathers also showed a 13 fold higher risk of developing attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a 25 times greater chance of getting bipolar disorder, and twice the risk of developing a psychosis. These kids also had doubled risk of having a substance abuse problem and a 60% higher likelihood of getting failing grades in school compared with those with younger fathers.

The scientists controlled for some of the well-known factors that can account for poor grades and psychoses and mental illnesses, such as the child’s birth order, the mother’s age, the mother’s and father’s education level, their history of psychiatric problems, and their history of criminality. Even after adjusting for these possible effects, they still found a strong correlation between higher rates of mental illness among younger siblings compared with their older ones."

Obviously, in an individual case this might not occur. Science deals in averages and probabilities, after all. Does anyone any longer doubt the correlation between smoking and lung cancer despite the fact that some people can smoke until their seventies without getting it?

Also, this isn't only an issue for men. We've known for years that maternal age at birth correlates with certain disorders, like Down's Syndrome, for example, which is one of the reasons why pregnancies after 35 are considered "at risk". That's why women who get pregnant after 35 are encouraged to have testing for birth defects. It just seems that the problem is greater for men.

"[FONT=&quot]For every year older a mother gets, her children get .37 new mutations. The rate for fathers is 1.51/year, 4x higher."[/FONT]

For most of human history this wouldn't have been a problem, what with most of the population dying at relatively young ages. Even today, nature puts an end to a woman's child bearing pretty early. A lot of women start having problems conceiving after 30-35, even if they're still menstruating.

Increased life expectancy, and delayed marriage and child bearing because of education and career concerns bring their own issues, I guess.

One thought occurred to me. I wonder if there are problems if the father is too young? I ask because I know I've read that if the mother is too young there are problems, although I think most of the time it has to do with delivery.





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Angela said:
For most of human history this wouldn't have been a problem, what with most of the population dying at relatively young ages.
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That is false. You are clearly not familiar with mortality patterns (distribution of mortality by age group) in the past. In the past death was mostly associated with childhood (because children are weak, vulnerable and have low immunity). Between 40% and 60% of all people were dying before the age of 18. But those who lived to 18, were not dying like flies after that. Living to the age of 60 or 65 was very common. Fathers were not younger than they are today, at least not in Ancient and Medieval Europe, or any other civilized society.
 
Tomenable said:
That is false. You are clearly not familiar with mortality patterns (distribution of mortality by age group) in the past. In the past death was mostly associated with childhood (because children are weak, vulnerable and have low immunity). Between 40% and 60% of all people were dying before the age of 18. But those who lived to 18, were not dying like flies after that. Living to the age of 60 or 65 was very common. Fathers were not younger than they are today, at least not in Ancient and Medieval Europe, or any other civilized society.
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You've forgotten. You don't get to make unsupported statements in this forum. You are conflating different things.

Please point me to studies which show that a high proportion of children in the past were born to father's over 30-35, which is what we're talking about here. How could fathers not have been younger then. The nobility, in particular, started breeding their children when they were still children.

In fact, please point me to a study which shows what percentage of men died at 20-30, versus 30-40, 40-50 and so on.

In fact, point me to studies which show that men living to 50+ was very common.
 
Start with reading about the Hajnal Line:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajnal_line#Overview

This thing about increasing genetic load is a hoax:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/06/02/145193??collection=

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-healthy-kurgan-pastoralist.html

We also observed a temporal trend whereby genomes from the recent past are more likely to be healthier than genomes from the deep past. This calls into question the idea that modern lifestyles have caused genetic load to increase over time.
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I also pointed out some time ago that many mutations are beneficial as well. Evolution is possible thanks to mutations. So populations which breed at a very young age (such as the Andaman Islanders or the Biaka Pygmies) evolve very slowly. This is why the Andaman Islanders - after having lived for at least 60,000 years in their current homeland - still look and behave just like their Out-of-Africa ancestors. Whereas in Northern Eurasia a lot of new mutations influencing phenotypes have emerged and then spread thanks to selective pressures.

Most of primitive societies breed early indeed:

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b4381154;view=1up;seq=7
 
My dad was 37 when I was born :cool-v: (y)
 
Tomenable said:
I also pointed out some time ago that many mutations are beneficial as well. Evolution is possible thanks to mutations. So populations which breed at a very young age (such as the Andaman Islanders or the Biaka Pygmies) evolve very slowly. This is why the Andaman Islanders - after having lived for at least 60,000 years in their current homeland - still look and behave just like their Out-of-Africa ancestors. Whereas in Northern Eurasia a lot of new mutations influencing phenotypes have emerged and then spread thanks to selective pressures.

Most of primitive societies breed early indeed:

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b4381154;view=1up;seq=7
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Fail. We've had this discussion before. I presented the papers with the scientific proof then. I'm not going to keep repeating the same things over and over again. Most mutations are either neutral or harmful. This is long established scientific fact. Have you heard about science? If you accumulate a hundred mutations, the majority of them will be neutral or harmful. Very few will be beneficial. Get it? That's why more diseases show up as we age, for example.

If you keep posting irrelevant and unresponsive material, I'm going to have to delete them so readers don't have to wade through irrelevant nonsense.

What's the matter, was dad in his forties or fifties when you were born? That's ok, my father was well into his thirties when I was born. These are averages and probabilities, you know, it doesn't necessarily apply in an individual case.

I'm still waiting for the scientific proof for your assertions in post #7.
 
Angela said:
Fail. We've had this discussion before. I presented the scientific proof then. Most mutations are either neutral or harmful.

You keep posting irrelevant and unresponsive material, I'm going to have to delete them.

What's the matter, was dad in his forties or fifties when you were born? That's ok, my father was well into his thirties when I was born. These are averages and probabilities, you know, it doesn't only apply in an individual case.

I'm still waiting for the scientific proof for your assertions in post #7.
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Why would you have to delete his posts?

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Angela said:
Fail. We've had this discussion before. I presented the scientific proof then. Most mutations are either neutral or harmful.

You keep posting irrelevant and unresponsive material, I'm going to have to delete them.

What's the matter, was dad in his forties or fifties when you were born? That's ok, my father was well into his thirties when I was born. These are averages and probabilities, you know, it doesn't only apply in an individual case.

I'm still waiting for the scientific proof for your assertions in post #7.
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Here are the numbers from medieval cemetery in Poland.
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...-who-were-they?p=403920&viewfull=1#post403920

This is after subtracting all kids from stats. The average life of women was between 22 to 35 years and men 35 to 55 years. And this is elite and middle class I would say. It is obvious by now that Tomenable and Srdceleva love to romanticise the "good" old times.
 
Children inherit new mutations when they build up in the father’s sperm and the mother’s eggs. Men pass on more mutations than women because they make sperm throughout their lives, using a process that is not perfect at copying DNA. And so, as the man ages, his sperm accumulate more and more mutations. Women pass on fewer mutations because they tend to be born with their full complement of eggs.
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I recall in the 1990s, conventional wisdom explaining it the other way around, men's continued manufacture of sperm protected the quality of their gametes as compared to women who were born with theirs. Anyways, if there is any validity or reliability to this test, my guess is that it has more to do with men's environmental exposures rather than the process described in the quote block above.
 
srdceleva said:
Why would you have to delete his posts?

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If the topic is mutations accumulating as people age, men and women, although men at a higher rate, and someone keeps posting material about how much healthier steppe people were, it's spamming, and agenda driven spamming at that....

It must be like a tic, he can't help himself.
 
elghund said:
I recall in the 1990s, conventional wisdom explaining it the other way around, men's continued manufacture of sperm protected the quality of their gametes as compared to women who were born with theirs. Anyways, if there is any validity or reliability to this test, my guess is that it has more to do with men's environmental exposures rather than the process described in the quote block above.
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That was 20 years ago, an aeon in terms of genetics research, yes? There have been numerous papers since then pointing out the correlation between paternal age and unfitness of offspring. Just google it.

As I pointed out before, no one doubts anymore the correlation between smoking and lung cancer, yet when tobacco was first consumed it was touted for its medicinal properties. Hopefully, as time passes, we get more information.

It's indeed been shown that environmental impacts cause mutations, but it's also been shown that age itself leads to increasing mutational load. Everything wears down.

This isn't directed to you personally, but I find the reaction of so many men to this topic rather extraordinary. Women were for years told that as they aged they had a greater risk of having children with problems. We didn't whine about it or deny it. We just took it into account in terms of decision making and took all the appropriate tests.

For goodness' sakes, grow up guys.
 
LeBrok said:
Here are the numbers from medieval cemetery in Poland.
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...-who-were-they?p=403920&viewfull=1#post403920

This is after subtracting all kids from stats. The average life of women was between 22 to 35 years and men 35 to 55 years. And this is elite and middle class I would say. It is obvious by now that Tomenable and Srdceleva love to romanticise the "good" old times.
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Thanks, LeBroc. It's good to have a sane conversation. :)

Yes, that seems about right, and, and as you say, these were relatively privileged people, and not the worst of times, necessarily. I have the benefit of a very extensive family tree going back almost five hundred years for my paternal side, so not the time of the plague, and given where my father's people lived, not overly impacted by war, and the figures are about the same. There were very few 50 year old men were having children.
 
Angela said:
If the topic is mutations accumulating as people age, men and women, although men at a higher rate, and someone keeps posting material about how much healthier steppe people were, it's spamming, and agenda driven spamming at that....

It must be like a tic, he can't help himself.
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Come on Angela! He may annoy you but tomenable posts interesting stuff what would forums be if people didn't argue a bit [emoji4]

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