生娃要趁早？丨一日一译 (25)

170923

Father clock: age and mutations

Women, as their well-meaning mothers often remind them, have a biological clock. Their fertility slips after their mid-30s, and the risk of genetic problems in their babies begins to rise. Increasingly, scientists are finding that men have something similar, with babies born to older fathers more likely to have genetic diseases. A paper published in Nature this week puts some startling numbers to that idea. Researchers studied the genomes of 1.500 Icelandic couples and their children, finding that a child born to 30-year-old parents would have, on average, 11 mutations from its mother, but 45 from its father. And while every year of maternal age adds 0.37 mutations on average, the rate for men is four times higher. That would make sense: while women are born with many eggs renewed only slowly, men produce sperm constantly--and each round of cell division carries a risk of introducing mutations. Tick tock, boys.

原文链接：Father clock: age and mutations

初译：

父亲年龄与突变速率

正如她们那好心的妈妈时常提醒过的，女性们体内有一个生物钟。她们年过30后，生育能力便逐渐下降，她们的宝宝出现基因问题的风险开始增大。科学家们日益发现，男性也有类似情况——父亲年纪越大，所生的宝宝得基因疾病的可能性就越大。本周，在《自然》杂志上发表的一篇论文用一些惊人的数字佐证了该观点。研究者们研究了1,500对冰岛夫妇及其孩子的基因组，发现30岁父母所生的小孩平均会有11项突变来自母亲，而父亲带来的却有45项。母亲年龄每增加一岁，突变平均就会增加0.37项，而男性的比率则会高出4倍。这很好理解：女性一诞生，许多卵子便会缓慢更迭，而男性却在不断制造精子——每轮细胞分裂都具有造成突变的风险。男孩子们，生娃要趁早啊。