Study shows that father`s age can affect offspring lifespan
(PHYSorg.com Biology)

How does the father`s age at conception affect his children? Researchers at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Disease (DZNE) and fellow scientists have studied this question in mice. Their findings, which have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), show that the offspring of elderly mouse-fathers had a shorter lifespan than those of young fathers and featured an exacerbation of a number of histopathological and molecular aging traits. Moreover, sperm of old males as well as the tissue from old father offspring featured shared epigenetic changes and altered activation states of longevity-related signaling pathways. These results are indicative of intergenerational influences on aging processes and they could potentially be of relevance for a human context.