The selfish spermatogonia and paternal effect genes
It is well established that advanced paternal age is associated with low sperm count/quality and infertility. However paternal ageing has also another facet and it is increasingly recognised that it poses risks to children’s physical and mental health. In this presentation I will discuss our current understanding of so-called de novo mutations, their origin, prevalence, importance in human disease and the impact of paternal age on their occurrence. Understanding the risks associated with delayed parenthood should be an important factor when advising couples seeking to use ART.
Anne Goriely
After an undergraduate degree in Engineering (Agronomy) at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), Anne Goriely obtained a PhD studying the development of the nervous system of the Drosophila embryo. She spent 4 years in New York at Cornell Medical School and Rockefeller University, before moving to the UK to work on the nervous system development of the chick embryo. In 2000 she joined the MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine (University of Oxford) to study the origin of rare human developmental disorders associated with paternal age effects.
She is currently Professor of Human Genetics based at the MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine in Oxford. Using a human genetics approach, her group’s main interests lie in elucidating the mechanisms by which we acquire new germline mutations and the implications of such processes in health and disease.