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Objective

Telomeres, repetitive sequences and associated proteins which cap and protect chromosome ends, undergo attrition with age in most tissues, providing an aging clock. Unlike other tissues, sperm telomeres increase rather than decrease with paternal age. The function of age-related sperm telomere elongation remains poorly understood. In yeast, mice and humans, telomeres can cause reversible silencing of genes, called the telomere position effect (TPE). We hypothesize that telomere elongation may help suppress Long Interspersed Nuclear Element 1 (L-1), a retrotransposon which becomes active in the germ line and can contribute to human genetic variation and genomic instability. Here we compare L-1 copy number in sperm samples from older and younger men to investigate the effect of paternal age and telomere elongation on L-1.

Design