title: Parental age affects somatic mutation rates in the progeny of flowering plants.
abstract: In humans, it is well known that the parental reproductive age has a strong influence on mutations transmitted to their progeny. Meiotic nondisjunction is known to increase in older mothers, and base substitutions tend to go up with paternal reproductive age. Hence, it is clear that the germinal mutation rates are a function of both maternal and paternal ages in humans. In contrast, it is unknown whether the parental reproductive age has an effect on somatic mutation rates in the progeny, because these are rare and difficult to detect. To address this question, we took advantage of the plant model system Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), where mutation detector lines allow for an easy quantitation of somatic mutations, to test the effect of parental age on somatic mutation rates in the progeny. Although we found no significant effect of parental age on base substitutions, we found that frameshift mutations and transposition events increased in the progeny of older parents, an effect that is stronger through the maternal line. In contrast, intrachromosomal recombination events in the progeny decrease with the age of the parents in a parent-of-origin-dependent manner. Our results clearly show that parental reproductive age affects somatic mutation rates in the progeny and, thus, that some form of age-dependent information, which affects the frequency of double-strand breaks and possibly other processes involved in maintaining genome integrity, is transmitted through the gametes.
authors: Department of Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, Chennai 600 036, India (A.K.S., T.B., V.G., A.M.R., S.D., R.B.); andInstitute of Plant Biology and Zurich-Basel Plant Science Center, University of Zurich, CH-8008 Zurich, Switzerland (C.S., U.G.).
authors: Amit Kumar
authors: AK
authors: Singh
authors: Department of Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, Chennai 600 036, India (A.K.S., T.B., V.G., A.M.R., S.D., R.B.); andInstitute of Plant Biology and Zurich-Basel Plant Science Center, University of Zurich, CH-8008 Zurich, Switzerland (C.S., U.G.).
authors: Tufail
authors: T
authors: Bashir
authors: Department of Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, Chennai 600 036, India (A.K.S., T.B., V.G., A.M.R., S.D., R.B.); andInstitute of Plant Biology and Zurich-Basel Plant Science Center, University of Zurich, CH-8008 Zurich, Switzerland (C.S., U.G.).
authors: Christian
authors: C
authors: Sailer
authors: Department of Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, Chennai 600 036, India (A.K.S., T.B., V.G., A.M.R., S.D., R.B.); andInstitute of Plant Biology and Zurich-Basel Plant Science Center, University of Zurich, CH-8008 Zurich, Switzerland (C.S., U.G.).
authors: Viswanathan
authors: V
authors: Gurumoorthy
authors: Department of Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, Chennai 600 036, India (A.K.S., T.B., V.G., A.M.R., S.D., R.B.); andInstitute of Plant Biology and Zurich-Basel Plant Science Center, University of Zurich, CH-8008 Zurich, Switzerland (C.S., U.G.).
authors: Anantha Maharasi
authors: AM
authors: Ramakrishnan
authors: Department of Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, Chennai 600 036, India (A.K.S., T.B., V.G., A.M.R., S.D., R.B.); andInstitute of Plant Biology and Zurich-Basel Plant Science Center, University of Zurich, CH-8008 Zurich, Switzerland (C.S., U.G.).
authors: Shanmuhapreya
authors: S
authors: Dhanapal
authors: Department of Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, Chennai 600 036, India (A.K.S., T.B., V.G., A.M.R., S.D., R.B.); andInstitute of Plant Biology and Zurich-Basel Plant Science Center, University of Zurich, CH-8008 Zurich, Switzerland (C.S., U.G.).
authors: Ueli
authors: U
authors: Grossniklaus
authors: Department of Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, Chennai 600 036, India (A.K.S., T.B., V.G., A.M.R., S.D., R.B.); andInstitute of Plant Biology and Zurich-Basel Plant Science Center, University of Zurich, CH-8008 Zurich, Switzerland (C.S., U.G.) rbaskar@iitm.ac.in.
authors: Ramamurthy
authors: R
authors: Baskar
mesh_terms: D017360:Arabidopsis / Q000235:genetics* / Q000254:growth & development*; D002452:Cell Count; D032461:Chromosomes, Plant / Q000235:genetics; D053903:DNA Breaks, Double-Stranded; D035264:Flowers / Q000235:genetics* / Q000254:growth & development*; D016368:Frameshift Mutation; D009154:Mutation / Q000235:genetics*; D059645:Mutation Rate; D011003:Ploidies; D011995:Recombination, Genetic; D012098:Reproduction; D036226:Seedlings / Q000235:genetics