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Older fathers are more likely to pass on new mutations to their offspring than older mothers, researchers from Iceland reported in the journal Nature today. They added that this could partlyexplain why a higher percentage of children today are born with an autism spectrum disorder, went on to be diagnosed with schizophrenia, or other potentially hereditary syndromes, illnesses orcondition.
Previous studies have pointed to several common factors which raise the risk of schizophrenia bipolar disorder and autism.
Older fathers are largest contributors to inherited genetic mutations.At the time of conception- when the sperm fertilizes the egg- the single largest contributor to passing on genetic defects comes from the father's older age and not the mother. The scientistsexplained that their study examined the world's largest whole genome sequencing project which linked diseases with uncommon defects in the genome.
What is the genome?
The genome refers to all the geneticdata a living being has. Each creature has a diferent genetic makeup or genome. A bacterium's genome is different from an ants', the human genome is slightly different from a chimpanzee's.
Genomesequencing is putting the four letters we used into the right order of DNA nucleotides or bases in a genome. The human genome consists of approximately 3.4. billion sequences of these genetic letters.The study clearly showed the link pointed to the fathers' age.
Decode Genetics, a company based in Reykjavik, Iceland, is a world leader in analyzing and understanding the human genome.
The teamgathered data on 78 families with children which had had a diagnosis of schizophrenia or autism. All the families lived in Iceland. The average age of the fathers in this group was 29.7 years. Theysequenced their genomes, as well as the genomes of another 1859 Icelandic citizens.
Below are some of their highlighted findings:
* For every extra year in the father's age, there was a two-mutation...