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DEVELOPMENT: There's Something Curious About Paternal-Age Effects
James F. Crow
Gene mutation rates are higher in males than in females and increase with paternal age. In his Perspective, Crow explains unexpected results from a study of a congenital disease called Apert's syndrome in which the likelihood of a child developing the disease increases with the age of the father (Goriely et al.). The results of the new work imply that rather than sperm having a higher mutation rate, the harmful mutation may be positively selected perhaps because it confers some benefit within the cellular environment of the testis.
The author is in the Department of Genetics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA. E-mail: jfcrow{at}facstaff.wisc.edu
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In Science Magazine
REPORTS
Anne Goriely, Gilean A. T. McVean, Maria Röjmyr, Björn Ingemarsson, and Andrew O. M. Wilkie (1 August 2003) Science301 (5633), 643.
[DOI: 10.1126/science.1085710] |Abstract »|Full Text »|PDF »|Supporting Online Material »
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