Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2007 Jul 17;104(29):12135-9.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.0702703104. Epub 2007 Jul 10.

Telomere length is paternally inherited and is associated with parental lifespan

Omer T Njajou  1 , Richard M Cawthon, Coleen M Damcott, Shih-Hsuan Wu, Sandy Ott, Michael J Garant, Elizabeth H Blackburn, Braxton D Mitchell, Alan R Shuldiner, Wen-Chi Hsueh
Affiliations

Telomere length is paternally inherited and is associated with parental lifespan

Omer T Njajou et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

Telomere length (TL) is emerging as a biomarker for aging and survival. To evaluate factors influencing this trait, we measured TL in a large homogeneous population, estimated the heritability (h(2)), and tested for parental effects on TL variation. Our sample included 356 men and 551 women, aged 18-92 years, from large Amish families. Mean TL in leukocytes was measured by quantitative PCR (mean: 6,198 +/- 1,696 bp). The h(2) of TL was 0.44 +/- 0.06 (P < 0.001), after adjusting for age, sex, and TL assay batch. As expected, TL was negatively correlated with age (r = -0.40; P < 0.001). There was no significant difference in TL between men and women, consistent with our previous findings that Amish men lived as long as Amish women. There was a stronger and positive correlation and association between TL in the offspring and paternal TL (r = 0.46, P < 0.001; beta = 0.22, P = 0.006) than offspring and maternal TL (r = 0.18, P = 0.04; beta = -0.02, P = 0.4). Furthermore, we observed a positive correlation and association between daughter's TL and paternal lifespan (r = 0.20, P < 0.001; beta = 0.21, P = 0.04), but not between daughter's TL and maternal lifespan (r = -0.01, beta = 0.04; both P = not significant). Our data, which are based on one of the largest family studies of human TL, support a link between TL and aging and lifespan and suggest a strong genetic influence, possibly via an imprinting mechanism, on TL regulation.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Correlation between TL and age. ∗, Adjusted for sex and TL assay batch.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Allsopp RC, Vaziri H, Patterson C, Goldstein S, Younglai EV, Futcher AB, Greider CW, Harley CB. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 1992;89:10114–10118. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Baird DM, Rowson J, Wynford-Thomas D, Kipling D. Nat Genet. 2003;33:203–207. - PubMed
    1. Cherif H, Tarry JL, Ozanne SE, Hales CN. Nucleic Acids Res. 2003;31:1576–1583. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Herbig U, Ferreira M, Condel L, Carey D, Sedivy JM. Science. 2006;311:1257. - PubMed
    1. Harley CB, Futcher AB, Greider CW. Nature. 1990;345:458–460. - PubMed

Publication types