The largest research on human gene mutation so far shows that the number of mutations inherited from the father is more than three times that from the mother, and the older the father is, the higher the mutation rate will be. The age of the mother has no effect on the mutation rate. This study is based on the DNA of about 85000 Icelanders. In addition to finding genetic differences between parents, it also calculated a more accurate human mutation rate, thus providing an estimate of the time when human ancestors and non-human primates split up. This article is one of two papers published last week in Nature Genetics, which, along with another article published in Nature, provide a dramatic new perspective on human evolution.
One of the co leaders of this study, Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, David? David Reich said, "Most mutations come from my father." This study not only found that the mutation rate of paternal lines is 3.3 times that of maternal lines, but also found that the mutation rate is related to my father's age. From 20 to 58 years old, the mutation rate doubled, but this probability has nothing to do with my mother's age. This discovery may bring hints to other studies, such as autism being related to the age of fathers. Related article: Men should be careful: wives should not be too young, and giving birth should be done early
James, a graduate student at Reich Laboratory? James Sun is the lead author of this study. He works with researchers from the Icelandic biopharmaceutical company deCODEGenetics, and is committed to analyzing about 2500 short DNA sequences from 85289 Icelanders. These subjects included 24832 core families ("father mother child combination"). The sequences they studied are called microsatellites. The number of repeats of these sequences varies from person to person, and their mutation rate is higher than the average mutation rate of all locations in the genome.
Reich's team found 2058 mutations. The calculated mutation rate shows that the ancestors of humans and chimpanzees parted ways between 6.6 million and 3.7 million years ago.
The research team of another gene decoding company (without the participation of researchers from Harvard Medical School) published an article in Nature last week, which directly estimated the ratio of single nucleotide substitution (another mutation process) in human genome under a large sample, and obtained basically consistent results.
These results are different from the conclusions drawn by previous scientists from fossil research. The fossils of the Chadian ape (Sahelanthropus chadensis, believed to be a human ancestor after humans and chimpanzees parted ways) can be traced back approximately 7 million years, earlier than the upper limit estimated by this study -6.6 million years ago. New research suggests that previous interpretations of this fossil may be incorrect.
(Intern Editor: Cai Junyi)