Fault Lines in Fatherhood

The Peril of Paternal Delay

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Suppose that you construct a family tree, but the branches are not straight.

What will happen to the children of older fathers, who have such small concealed imperfections that may cause more serious issues in the future, such as autism or cancer? It is precisely a new study that has revealed that. It has nothing to do with blame - it has everything to do with just knowing how our bodies evolve as we grow older and how this will impact the generation to come. This study, newly by researchers at the Welcome Sanger Institute, takes advantage of the high-tech DNA technologies to explain that men have the potential to pass more and more harmful changes in their genes on to their sperm as they age. They are not accidental errors but like wily ways out, faulty cells are allowed to occupy them.

To begin with, a little biology lesson, sperm does not get created in a day. Special testicular stem cells in the testes continue to produce sperm in men all their life - consider them as a production line in the factory, which never closes down. Each time these cells reproduce to produce new sperm, there exists a few chances of a copying error, termed as a de novo mutation. It is such a mistake in a recipe that may render the cake bad-tasting. Most of these typos occur in the junk segments of DNA that are not of much consequence therefore not a big deal. Yet there are those genes that get landed in strategic locations, such as genes that aid in the development of the brain or prevent cancer.