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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
xy has less capacity. deviations magnified?
All cis-privileged men are evil and always to blame
But the muties are all good swimmers at least.
Play Command HQ online
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.
Superkid !
Yo, isn't it the mutations that allow genetic improvements? Now how can we get the Mothers to contribute more mutations and do their fair share?
...omphaloskepsis often...
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. You are Nazis and monsters and white supremacists. Retract this article immediately or we're going after your sponsors. Die in hell.
Signed,
The Tolerance Brigade
The more disposable gender is the better one to experiment with. You could lose a LOT of men to bad genes before it costs you same (raw) reproductive capacity of losing even 5% of 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.
In 20 comments all relevant was said. Before the troll brigade arrived. I've nothing to add.
Bravo gentlemen!
The difference between men and women, genetically, comes down to the SRY gene and a few missing ones that makes the difference between the sex chrosome (X or Y). Meaning the difference would either have to be that the SRY gene somehow also causes mutations in sperm versus eggs, or more likely eggs are less likely to mutate than sperm are. Which is understandable, men's reproductive area, as such, is more exposed to radiation than women's (water does wonders for blocking ionizing radiation). Meaning sperm are more likely to get hit and mutate. And/Or sperm production cycles are more messy and take less time to correctly copy all genetic code.
Actually that last one makes sense as well. Millions of sperm, quantity over quality, coming at (usually) one egg a month. IE it's all the sperm's fault. Sperm causes mutants! Down with the sperm! Let's start some bizarre ultra feminist dystopia where sperm is considered evil.
This would have been a really good explanation for why mutants are only being noticed in the modern era in x-men.
You need our wrigglers to keep things jumping!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Maybe that suit well with the concept of one leading male fertilizing multiple women. Get some help with extra variation.
(4:1 would even fit the Islamic ratio of women per man.)
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.
I lose faith in slashdot readers sometime. The study said nothing about X or Y chromosomes or that men had more mutations than women. It said fathers as they age pass on more mutations to BOTH their sons and daughters than mothers.
The total entropy of any system can't decrease. This with mutations destroying our DNA, is nothing new. Researches have already for a long time been estimating for how long time the human race can continue until the increased entropy in our genes will give us too serious problems and we would die out if we don't manually correct by gene manipulation.
The scary thing is that this is not in a far, far future. This is an accelerating process, and we are on the border to see a lot more problems within just a few generations.
You're right, I misunderstood. The gender of the kid should be irrelevant (unless the mutations were disproportionately on the Y chromosome).
I mean, oozytes (eggs for the non-fancy talkers) are all there at birth already. In contrast, sperm is constantly being produced by cell division and thus mutations duke it out all the while based on competition of the gamete precursors rather than the resulting individuals. This should certainly cause a large amplification for mutations causing accelerated division of sperm precursors.
So I'd not be surprised if we were talking about a factor of a hundred or so here. There is just so much more potential for mutation in the male gametes to proliferate.
There is literally no underlying biology to support such claim. The very basic process of mitosis is exactly what makes such numbers impossible. Yes, men could get some mutations in a lifetime due to harsh lifestyle and substance abuse, but to make it into a gamete is very improbable. Life has good guard mechanisms against deadly mutations.
The same place where they have dating apps to confirm you aren't fucking your cousin? Please bring this study to some place normal like eastern Kentucky or a West Virginia holler. No way you could replicate it there!
http://www.nytimes.com/1982/08/22/us/californians-as-in-1960-s-lead-in-resistance-to-selective-service.html "many women's groups opposed President Carter's unsuccessful proposal for registration of women"
I don't know if you are old enough to remember when Jimmy Carter was President and he tried to extend Selective Service registration to include women too. By any reasonable measure that is still modern times and feminists fought very hard for their gender to be allowed to escape this potential danger men must accept.
While some feminist groups also fought to extend their gender's unique protections to men, many others did not.
I'm not surprised by this conclusion. Traditionally, men have faced harsher conditions, either in terms of being hunters in hunter-gatherer societies, or in terms of workplace dangers in the wage-slave world. Such harsh conditions, as well as trauma from interacting with such conditions, can have a direct impact on DNA (say, from greater exposure to damaging chemicals in the workplace). It's no surprise men may face a higher possibility of genetic mutations.
women who allow themselves to be bought by older men?
They do so for the wallet. If they want to reproduce, odds are they'll step out with the 19 y.o. pool boy.
Have gnu, will travel.
I doubt that the event is rare, but being able to detect it probably depends on rare events happening. Most mutations are neutral. Most of the rest are fatal before a period has been missed. It's only the remainder that even have a chance of being detected. Of those, most aren't blatant. Of the blatant, most are fatal before birth. So we're looking at that small residue.
OTOH, if it ever becomes common to do whole genome sequencing, then there will probably be a lot more evidence of this happening.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I read the title and I guessed it was because we keep out genetic reproductive material externally where it is exposed to more possibility for damage.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
.. That men are more evolved than women.. I mean it "confirms"