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
. 2011 Jun 23:5:32.
doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2011.00032. eCollection 2011.

New perspectives on rodent models of advanced paternal age: relevance to autism

Claire J Foldi  1 , Darryl W Eyles, Traute Flatscher-Bader, John J McGrath, Thomas H J Burne
Affiliations

New perspectives on rodent models of advanced paternal age: relevance to autism

Claire J Foldi et al. Front Behav Neurosci. .

Abstract

Offspring of older fathers have an increased risk of various adverse health outcomes, including autism and schizophrenia. With respect to biological mechanisms for this association, there are many more germline cell divisions in the life history of a sperm relative to that of an oocyte. This leads to more opportunities for copy error mutations in germ cells from older fathers. Evidence also suggests that epigenetic patterning in the sperm from older men is altered. Rodent models provide an experimental platform to examine the association between paternal age and brain development. Several rodent models of advanced paternal age (APA) have been published with relevance to intermediate phenotypes related to autism. All four published APA models vary in key features creating a lack of consistency with respect to behavioral phenotypes. A consideration of common phenotypes that emerge from these APA-related mouse models may be informative in the exploration of the molecular and neurobiological correlates of APA.

Keywords: advanced paternal age; autism; behavior; epigenetics; mouse.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Alter M. D., Gilani A. I., Champagne F. A., Curley J. P., Turner J. B., Hen R. (2009). Paternal transmission of complex phenotypes in inbred mice. Biol. Psychiatry 66, 1061–1066 10.1016/j.biopsych.2009.05.026 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Auroux M. (1983). Decrease of learning capacity in offspring with increasing paternal age in the rat. Teratology 27, 141–148 10.1002/tera.1420270202 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Baron C. A., Tepper C. G., Liu S. Y., Davis R. R., Wang N. J., Schanen N. C., Gregg J. P. (2006). Genomic and functional profiling of duplicated chromosome 15 cell lines reveal regulatory alterations in UBE3A-associated ubiquitin-proteasome pathway processes. Hum. Mol. Genet. 15, 853–869 10.1093/hmg/ddl004 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Berg J. S., Brunetti-Pierri N., Peters S. U., Kang S. H. L., Fong C. T., Salamone J., Freedenberg D., Hannig V. L., Prock L. A., Miller D. T., Raffalli P., Harris D. J., Erickson R. P., Cunniff C., Clark G. D., Blazo M. A., Peiffer D. A., Gunderson K. L., Sahoo T., Patel A., Lupski J. R., Beaudet A. L., Cheung S. W. (2007). Speech delay and autism spectrum behaviors are frequently associated with duplication of the 7q11.23 Williams-Beuren syndrome region. Genet. Med. 9, 427–441 10.1097/GIM.0b013e3180986192 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Bray I., Gunnell D., Smith G. D. (2006). Advanced paternal age: how old is too old? J. Epidemiol. Community Health 60, 851–853 10.1136/jech.2005.045179 - DOI - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources