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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.
Fathers are the mother of evolution
It appears that throughout evolutionary history a much larger proportion of men produced no offspring than did women. The men who did produce offspring produced more, leading to human beings having about twice as many female ancestors as male (males were more likely to be distant cousins of other males in your family tree, which means more duplication of (great-)*n grandfathers).
Since males were more likely to be childless, to have an equal influence on evolution the males who were fathers would need to pass on more mutations. There would have to be evolutionary pressure for both sexes to equally influence evolution, though. Or, at least, some advantage for males in particular to keep up with women.
Women are more valuable from an evolutionary standpoint than men because they take so long to reproduce, whereas a single male can impregnate hundreds of women at a time.
This means that while males are largely disposable, there is also significantly less room for women to deviate from the norm without running the risk of losing viability for their immediate family. Therefore males will deviate from the norm much more.
This is why males tend to dominate the ultra-high and ultra-low intellect while the bell curve for female intelligence is much tighter, and similarly why children tend to take after their father's in terms of personality and aptitude: that's the edge version.
This makes me wonder if men having substantially higher mutation rates than women is a result of sex selection: women tending to be more attracted to men whose genes mutate faster, probably reaching some 'optimum' point rather than having a runaway effect. There might be some actual way of detecting another's mutation rate, or it might have just manifested as women being attracted to older men.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
No. Not true. This story is lies. Fake news. Everybody knows that men and women are exactly the same at everything. Claiming otherwise is sexist and misogynist and racist and fascist and placist and bassist.
Not necessarily fake news, but serving news.
I know you were making a funny - a good one by the way - but there is an angle to the news.
As feminism has convinced women for a long time that they don't need men, and as we now have more educated women than men, and no end of that trend in sight, single, educated women are hitting their 30's and suddenly realizing that their reproductive drive is on high alert. But there is a problem. They are having a hellava time meeting and sealing the deal with any male that they consider worthy. This is based on the inherent acceptability factor that the female of the species wants to marry up in class.
So we are seeing a lot of educated women in a panic, freezing their eggs in hopes of finding a male who lives up to their standards. Some companies actually pay for this process. But that's a loser's game, because as they age, their value to the males of the species drops, and unless they plan on marrying someone much younger, there are not going to be too many 50 year old men who want to have children at that age.
Now there are a couple solutions. Marry young and have children at a more physically appropriate age, then work your career, and the other is to make the educational environment less unpleasant for men. Having been through that, it is an issue when you are reminded every day of how terrible a sub-human you are. Because all nature versus nurture aside, women inherently call the shots on reproduction, and at present, have largely priced themselves out of the market.
Back to the subject at hand. As many women panic over their declining fertility, and are taking some big efforts to try to artificially extend it, there is a social need to try to pin blame for the issue on the male of the species. The underlying message is "Grow up men" "stop being immature and we need fresh young sperm, because if you don't give it to us when you are young, any problems are your fault."
Whereas the real issue is that if you want children, you don't wait until you are at an age when most earlier humans were grandparents or dead. We have had some success with the artificial extension of childhood, but cannot extend that much more without a lot of bad issues. My great grandparents were married at 13 years old, but they had to to have a good chance of raising children before they died.
Today, it's the opposite. Some people are concerned they will die before having any children.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.