ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2015
Elevated germline mutation rate in teenage fathers.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 32 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
32 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 52 citations in OpenAlex.
- Effect of paternal age on offspring birth defects: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Aging · 2020Pooled it
- Risk for childhood leukemia associated with maternal and paternal age.European journal of epidemiology · 2015Pooled it
- A family portrait of the genomic factors shaping tandem repeat mutagenesis.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Ambient air pollution in critical windows of exposure and spontaneous miscarriage in a preconception cohort.Environmental research · 2025Article
- Mechanisms underlying low mutation rates in mammalian oocytes and preimplantation embryos.Nucleic acids research · 2025Review
- Estimates of the Mutation Rate per Year Can Explain Why the Molecular Clock Depends on Generation Time.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Effects of parental age and polymer composition on short tandem repeat de novo mutation rates.Genetics · 2024Article
- Germline mutation rate is elevated in young and old parents inEvolution letters · 2023Article
- The 'faulty male' hypothesis for sex-biased mutation and disease.Current biology : CB · 2023Review
- Epidemiology of birth defects in teenage pregnancies: Based on provincial surveillance system in eastern China.Frontiers in public health · 2022Observational
- Review
- Mutation analysis of 28 autosomal short tandem repeats in the Chinese Han population.Molecular biology reports · 2021Article
- A Raman algorithm to estimate human age from protein structural variations in autopsy skin samples: a protein biological clock.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Mitotic gene conversion can be as important as meiotic conversion in driving genetic variability in plants and other species without early germline segregation.PLoS biology · 2021Article
- Testing for paternal influences on offspring telomere length in a human cohort in the Philippines.American journal of physical anthropology · 2020Article
- Development of a Large Gene-Associated SSR Marker Set and in-Depth Genetic Characterization in Scarlet Sage.Frontiers in genetics · 2020Article
- Mode and Tempo of Microsatellite Length Change in a Malaria Parasite Mutation Accumulation Experiment.Genome biology and evolution · 2019Article
- Overlooked roles of DNA damage and maternal age in generating human germline mutations.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
- Identification of Novel Microsatellite Markers to Assess the Population Structure and Genetic Differentiation ofFrontiers in microbiology · 2019Article
- A three-generation study on the association of tobacco smoking with asthma.International journal of epidemiology · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
7 authors at 4 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Men age and die, while cells in their germline are programmed to be immortal. To elucidate how germ cells maintain viable DNA despite increasing parental age, we analysed DNA from 24 097 parents and their children, from Europe, the Middle East and Africa. We chose repetitive microsatellite DNA that mutates (unlike point mutations) only as a result of cellular replication, providing us with a natural 'cell-cycle counter'. We observe, as expected, that the overall mutation rate for fathers is seven times higher than for mothers. Also as expected, mothers have a low and lifelong constant DNA mutation rate. Surprisingly, however, we discover that (i) teenage fathers already set out from a much higher mutation rate than teenage mothers (potentially equivalent to 77-196 male germline cell divisions by puberty); and (ii) ageing men maintain sperm DNA quality similar to that of teenagers, presumably by using fresh batches of stem cells known as 'A-dark spermatogonia'.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.