ArticleMolecular cytogenetics2016
The paradox of longer sperm telomeres in older men's testes: a birth-cohort effect caused by transgenerational telomere erosion in the female germline.
Article in Molecular cytogenetics, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 24 citations in OpenAlex.
- A meta-analysis on the heritability of vertebrate telomere length.Journal of evolutionary biology · 2022Pooled it
- Tissue morphology predicts telomere shortening in human tissues.Cell reports methods · 2026Article
- Paternal effects on telomere integrity during the sperm-to-embryo transition.Current opinion in genetics & development · 2025Review
- The crosstalk between telomeres and DNA repair mechanisms: an overview to mammalian somatic cells, germ cells, and preimplantation embryos.Journal of assisted reproduction and genetics · 2024Review
- Telomere Dynamics in Livestock.Biology · 2023Review
- Genetic and clinical determinants of telomere length.HGG advances · 2023Article
- The body's integrated repair kit: Studying mesenchymal stem cells for better ligament repair.Biomedical journal · 2019Article
- The model of "genetic compartments": a new insight into reproductive genetics.Journal of assisted reproduction and genetics · 2019Review
- Transgenerational telomere erosion in the monogametic sex: human telomeres progressively erode in the female germline and do not lengthen in aged testes.Molecular cytogenetics · 2019Article
- The contribution of parent-to-offspring transmission of telomeres to the heritability of telomere length in humans.Human genetics · 2019Article
- Epigenetic alterations in longevity regulators, reduced life span, and exacerbated aging-related pathology in old father offspring mice.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018Article
- Shaping long-term primate development: Telomere length trajectory as an indicator of early maternal maltreatment and predictor of future physiologic regulation.Development and psychopathology · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Longer telomeres in the somatic cells of an individual have been regarded as a marker of youth and biological fitness within a population. Yet, several research groups have reported the surprising findings of longer telomeres in the germ cells of older men, which translated into longer leukocyte telomere length in their offspring. Although all these studies were purely cross-sectional, a longitudinal trend in the aging testes of individual males was taken for granted. Recently, a high-profile study reported a negative birth-cohort effect on leukocyte mean telomere length in human populations, namely the progressive loss of telomeric sequence between healthy human generations. This is what I based my theory of telomere-driven macroevolution on, 12 years ago. On the basis of published data on telomere length inheritance, I identified the source of human intergenerational telomere erosion in the female germline. Accordingly, because of the resulting birth-cohort effect, there is no need for any paradoxical telomere lengthening in older men's gonads to interpret the old-father-long-telomered-offspring data.
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Registered trials
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