Wild Urban Evolution and Ecology Lab, Centre of New Technologies (CeNT), University of Warsaw, 02-097, Warsaw, Poland.
Bioessays. 2019 Nov;41(11):e1900095. doi: 10.1002/bies.201900095. Epub 2019 Oct 2.
Reproduction, a basic property of biological life, entails costs for an organism, ultimately detectable as reduction in survival prospects. Telomeres are an excellent candidate biomarker for explaining these reproductive costs, because their shortening correlates with increased mortality risk. For similar reasons, telomeres are perceived as biomarkers of individual "quality." The relationship between reproduction and telomere dynamics is reviewed, emphasizing that cost and quality perspectives, commonly presented in isolation, should be integrated. While a majority of correlative studies have confirmed the relationship between telomere dynamics and various reproductive outputs, only limited experimental support exists showing that reproduction causes telomeres to shorten. A shift of focus to experimental manipulations of reproductive effort/telomere dynamics is crucial. However, the observation of survival reduction in response to these manipulations is essential for establishing telomeres as genuine biomarkers, allowing to unravel trade-offs related to reproduction.
繁殖是生物生命的基本属性之一，但它也会给生物体带来代价，最终表现为生存机会的减少。端粒是解释这些生殖代价的一个很好的候选生物标志物，因为它们的缩短与增加的死亡风险相关。出于类似的原因，端粒被视为个体“质量”的生物标志物。本文回顾了繁殖和端粒动力学之间的关系，强调了通常孤立呈现的成本和质量观点应该整合在一起。虽然大多数相关性研究已经证实了端粒动力学与各种生殖输出之间的关系，但仅有有限的实验证据表明生殖会导致端粒缩短。将重点转移到生殖努力/端粒动力学的实验操纵上至关重要。然而，观察到这些操纵会导致生存机会减少，对于将端粒确立为真正的生物标志物是必不可少的，这可以揭示与繁殖相关的权衡。
