Université Lyon 1, CNRS, UMR 5558, Laboratoire de Biométrie et Biologie Evolutive, F-769622, Villeurbanne, France.
Université Lyon 1, CNRS, UMR 5558, Laboratoire de Biométrie et Biologie Evolutive, F-769622, Villeurbanne, France.
Mech Ageing Dev. 2023 Jun;212:111799. doi: 10.1016/j.mad.2023.111799. Epub 2023 Mar 21.
In many animal species, including humans, males have shorter lifespan and show faster survival aging than females. This differential increase in mortality between sexes could result from the accumulation of deleterious mutations in the mitochondrial genome of males due to the maternal mode of mtDNA inheritance. To date, empirical evidence supporting the existence of this mechanism - called the Mother Curse hypothesis - remains largely limited to a few study cases in humans and Drosophila. In this study, we tested whether the Mother Curse hypothesis accounts for sex differences in lifespan and aging rate across 128 populations of mammals (60 and 68 populations studied in wild and captive conditions, respectively) encompassing 104 species. We found that adult lifespan decreases with increasing mtDNA neutral substitution rate in both sexes in a similar way in the wild - but not in captivity. Moreover, the aging rate marginally increased with neutral substitution rate in males and females in the wild. Overall, these results indicate that the Mother Curse hypothesis is not supported across mammals. We further discuss the implication of these findings for our understanding of the evolution of sex differences in mortality and aging.
在许多动物物种中，包括人类，雄性的寿命比雌性短，并且生存衰老速度更快。这种性别间死亡率的差异增加可能是由于雄性线粒体基因组中的有害突变由于母系 mtDNA 遗传而积累所致。迄今为止，支持这种机制存在的经验证据——称为“母亲诅咒假说”——在很大程度上仍然仅限于人类和果蝇的少数研究案例。在这项研究中，我们测试了“母亲诅咒假说”是否可以解释 128 个人类哺乳动物群体（分别在野生和圈养条件下研究了 60 和 68 个群体）中寿命和衰老率的性别差异，其中包括 104 个物种。我们发现，在野生条件下，无论在雄性还是雌性中，mtDNA 中性替换率的增加都会导致成年寿命的下降，而在圈养条件下则不然。此外，在野生条件下，雄性和雌性的衰老率都略微随着中性替换率的增加而增加。总的来说，这些结果表明“母亲诅咒假说”在哺乳动物中并不成立。我们进一步讨论了这些发现对我们理解死亡率和衰老性别差异进化的影响。
