Laboratoire Evolution, Génomes et Spéciation, UPR 9034, CNRS, Avenue de la Terrasse, Gif sur Yvette, France.
J Evol Biol. 2010 Apr;23(4):678-86. doi: 10.1111/j.1420-9101.2010.01932.x. Epub 2010 Feb 9.
Children born to older parents tend to have lower intelligence and are at higher risk for disorders such as schizophrenia and autism. Such observations of ageing damage being passed on from parents to offspring are not often considered within the evolutionary theory of ageing. Here, we show the 25% memory impairment in Drosophila melanogaster offspring solely dependent on the age of the parents and also passed on to the F2 generation. Furthermore, this parental age effect was not attributed to a generalized reduction in condition of the offspring but was specific to short-term memory. We also provide evidence implicating oxidative stress as a causal factor by showing that lines selected for resistance to oxidative stress did not display a memory impairment in offspring of old parents. The identification of the parental age-related memory impairment in a model system should stimulate integration between mechanistic studies of age-related mortality risk and functional studies of parental age effects on the fitness of future generations.
儿童由年长的父母所生，往往智力较低，并且患精神分裂症和自闭症等疾病的风险较高。这种父母传递给后代的衰老损伤的观察结果，在衰老的进化理论中并不常见。在这里，我们仅显示出黑腹果蝇后代 25%的记忆损伤完全取决于父母的年龄，并且也传递给了 F2 代。此外，这种亲代年龄效应不是由于后代的一般条件下降所致，而是与短期记忆特异性相关。我们还提供了证据，表明氧化应激是一个因果因素，因为我们表明，选择对氧化应激具有抗性的品系的后代，在年老父母的后代中并没有表现出记忆损伤。在模型系统中识别与亲代年龄相关的记忆损伤，应该刺激与年龄相关的死亡率风险的机制研究以及亲代年龄对后代适应性的功能研究之间的整合。
