page_title: Paternal age effect
section_title: Epigenetic changes
hierarchical_section_title: Paternal age effect / Mechanisms / Epigenetic changes
caption_attribution_description: English: This image shows a DNA molecule that is methylated on both strands on the center cytosine. DNA methylation plays an important role for epigenetic gene regulation in development and cancer. [Details: The picture shows the crystal structure of a short DNA helix with sequence "accgcCGgcgcc", which is methylated on both strands at the center cytosine. The structure was taken from the Protein Data Bank (accession number 329D), rendering was performed with VMD (Visual Molecular Dynamics rendering program) and post-processing was done in Photoshop.
context_page_description: The paternal age effect is the statistical relationship between the father's age at conception and biological effects on the child. Such effects can relate to birthweight, congenital disorders, life expectancy and psychological outcomes. A 2017 review found that while severe health effects are associated with higher paternal age, the total increase in problems caused by paternal age is low. While paternal age has increased since 1960–1970, this is not seen as a major public health concern.
  The genetic quality of sperm, as well as its volume and motility, all may decrease with age, leading the population geneticist James F. Crow to claim that the "greatest mutational health hazard to the human genome is fertile older males".
  The paternal age effect was first proposed implicitly by German physician Wilhelm Weinberg in 1912 and explicitly by British psychiatrist Lionel Penrose in 1955. DNA-based research started more recently, in 1998, in the context of paternity testing.
context_section_description: The production of sperm cells involves DNA methylation, an epigenetic process that regulates the expression of genes. Improper genomic imprinting and other errors sometimes occur during this process, which can affect the expression of genes related to certain disorders, increasing the offspring's susceptibility. The frequency of these errors appears to increase with age. This could explain the association between paternal age and schizophrenia. ; Paternal age affects offspring's behavior, possibly via an epigenetic mechanism recruiting a transcriptional repressor REST
caption: DNA methylation
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