The older the parents, the higher the rate of spontaneous genetic mutations in children

genetic
published online in the British Journal of Genetics, reporting the largest study of spontaneous human gene mutations to date. The study also showed that the older the parents, especially the older the father, the higher the rate of spontaneous genetic mutations (DNM) in their children. This analysis of the mutation process of human genome sequence diversity is of vital importance to future medical research.
genetic mutations can be spontaneous or induced, there is no fundamental difference between the two. Usually spontaneous mutations are the first genetic changes in a family, caused by an egg or sperm mutation on one of the parents.
To understand how parental age and gender factors cause spontaneous genetic mutations, Daniel Gudjasen, a researcher at deCODE, an Iceland-based decoding gene company, and colleagues conducted genome-wide sequence analysis of 14,688 Icelanders, including 1,548 individuals and their parents, of which 225 included at least one of their children.
, the team identified 108,778 high-quality spontaneous genetic mutations, an average of 70.3 per household. They found that the number of spontaneous genetic mutations from mothers increased by 0.37 per year by age, while the number of fathers increased by 1.51 per year by age, with the former accounting for only a quarter of the latter. The team also found that the number of cluster mutations increased faster with the mother's age than with the father's age, and that the mother's spontaneous genetic mutation cluster had a larger genomic span than the father's. In addition, the type of spontaneous genetic mutation from the mother changes significantly with age.
researchers say the latest analysis helps to understand the mutation processes that cause the diversity of human genome sequences, which are critical in medical, genetic and evolutionary chemistry studies. (Source: Science and Technology Daily Zhang Mengran)