eli5 why older parents above 40 year age..genes are bad for the child like austism and other mental disorder..is age matter in child capability?
In: Biology
Because our genetic material mutates as we age. Egg cells at 40 are 40 years old, they are the same egg cells a woman was born with and aged with her ; many things could have happened that could have damaged the DNA in those 40 years, so the chance of having a mutation that’s bad for the child is higher than say in mother’s 20s. Sperm, while not directly affected by aging (the sperm cells are created anew daily), can still suffer damage because the rest of the body is aging and accumulating damage to DNA.
Out of curiosity…did something happen while you were writing the title? Or just aggressive autocorrect?
When I studied fertility in university, we learned that more problems tend to happen with older mothers because their bodies can’t always generate adequate blood supply to the fetus.
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Because of epigenetics. Genes are little instruction manuals for making proteins, but there is a whole second part of genetics related to gene expression. Basically your body uses signals to turn on, turn off, or regulate where or how much of a protein to make. This creates an amazingly complex choreography of gene expression that builds your body the way it is. Many of these signals are coming from other genes, it’s genes regulating genes. But some of them come from the environment.
There is a whole bunch of development going on during pregnancy, and your environment in that case is your mothers body. So as women age the epigenetic signals they side to a baby in the womb are different, and this leads to different types of development.
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