Germline mutation rate is elevated in young and old parents in Caenorhabditis remanei

Chen, Hwei-yen, Krieg, Therese, Mautz, Brian, Jolly, Cécile, Scofield, Douglas, Maklakov, Alexei A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5809-1203 and Immler, Simone (2023) Germline mutation rate is elevated in young and old parents in Caenorhabditis remanei. Evolution Letters, 7 (6). pp. 478-489. ISSN 2056-3744

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Abstract

The effect of parental age on germline mutation rate across generations is not fully understood. While some studies report a positive linear relationship of mutation rate with increasing age, others suggest that mutation rate varies with age but not in a linear fashion. We investigated the effect of parental age on germline mutations by generating replicated mutation accumulation lines in Caenorhabditis remanei at three parental ages ("Young T1"[Day 1], "Peak T2"[Day 2], and "Old T5"[Day 5] parents). We conducted whole-genome resequencing and variant calling to compare differences in mutation rates after three generations of mutation accumulation. We found that Peak T2 lines had an overall reduced mutation rate compared to Young T1 and Old T5 lines, but this pattern of the effect varied depending on the variant impact. Specifically, we found no high-impact variants in Peak T2 lines, and modifiers and up- and downstream gene variants were less frequent in these lines. These results suggest that animals at the peak of reproduction have better DNA maintenance and repair compared to young and old animals. We propose that C. remanei start to reproduce before they optimize their DNA maintenance and repair, trading the benefits of earlier onset of reproduction against offspring mutation load. The increase in offspring mutation load with age likely represents germline senescence.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: Data and code availability: The datasets and the scripts to analyze the data, as well as IGV screenshots, are available on GitHub: https://github.com/hweiyenchen/Nematode_ASM164373v4/. Funding Information: This study was funded by grants from the European Research Council (ERC StG 3366333-HapSelA) and the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (Wallenberg Academy Fellowship) to S.I. A.A.M. was funded by the ERC (ERC CoG GermlineAgeingSoma 724909).
Uncontrolled Keywords: age-related mutation rate,germline mutations,mutation accumulation,parental age effects,selection shadow,snps,ecology, evolution, behavior and systematics,genetics ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1100/1105
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Science > School of Biological Sciences
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Centres > Norwich Institute for Healthy Aging
Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation
Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Organisms and the Environment
Related URLs:
Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 24 Oct 2024 16:30
Last Modified: 02 Dec 2024 01:44
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/97190
DOI: 10.1093/evlett/qrad052

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