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Fathers Pass On Four Times As Many New Genetic Mutations As Mothers, Says Study (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: 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." In the study published in Nature, the researchers analyzed the DNA of 1,500 Icelanders and their parents and, for 225 people, at least one of their children. They found that new mutations from mothers increased by 0.37 per year of age, a quarter of the rate found in men. While the vast majority of new mutations are thought to be harmless, occasionally they can disrupt the workings of genes that are important for good health.
Male gametes are continuously produced, while female gametes are 100% present at birth. Transcription errors occurs during replication which may be as much of a factor as male vs. female gonad tissue depth.
eh yah, but that's completely unrelated to TFA. This is about mutation accumulation in germ cells (i.e. sperm). This mutation rate is not specific for the Y chromosome, thus the girl babies receive the mutations at the exact same rate as the boy babies.
Basically all the article states is that mature egg cells accumulate fewer mutations than mature sperm cells, which is kinda obvious as their stem cells go through fewer cell divisions until they create the cell that actually becomes the germ cell.
Really people, why is this modded up?
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
You read the short summary incorrectly. They never said men have more mutations they said men pass on more mutations to their children, both to sons and daughters. Other than in their sperm men don't have more mutations than women.
*ANY* boat - metaphorical or literal. It's a rare feminist, or any other disadvantaged group for that matter, that will stick to their principles when being a member of that group presents an opportunity to gain an advantage, as exemplified by the call "Women and children first!" in the rush to the lifeboats. The ability to put looking out for number one over our principles is one of the few things that seems to be a constant across pretty much any grouping of humankind you can imagine.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
I believe the generally accepted view on the evolutionary impact of sexual dimorphism, in most mammals, is that males are experimental (and relatively expendable, as far as biological fitness is concerned; the act of copulation is a relatively brief part of childrearing.) Take, for example, the X chromosome: with only one copy, males experience its effects far more prominently. In females, one of the copies of the X chromosome is selected at random to be disabled, so the two copies are averaged out, statistically driving the overall phenotype toward the mean. There are a number of physiological traits that exhibit this pattern, for example men have a higher standard deviation in height than women. In a hunter-gatherer scenario, this protects the nucleus of the tribe from deleterious mutations, and is a key advantage of sexual reproduction.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!