Genotyping the dead: Using offspring as proxy to estimate the genetic correlation of education and longevity

Conley, Dalton; Sotoudeh, Ramina

doi:10.1073/pnas.1616274113

Cited by 2 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…We thus suggest that relatively lower proportion of environmental variation in menarcheal age in well-educated families may be the reason why daughters' menarcheal age correlated with paternal lifespan only in such families. Such social moderation of the level of heritability has been previously demonstrated for behavioural traits, including the age at first intercourse, educational attainment, intellectual development (reviewed by Guo & Stearns, 2002) and early fertility (Kohler, Rodgers, Miller, Skytthe, & Christensen, 2006 (Conley & Sotoudeh, 2016).…”

Section: Interaction Between Daughters' Menarcheal Age and Quality mentioning

confidence: 63%

“…It is thus highly likely that shorter time span of Aul's study inevitably led to the lower variation in the growth conditions during puberty, which may explain also the absence of secular trends in the breast development rate. On the other hand, unlike in Aul's study, the participation in the Estonian Biobank was voluntary, rendering it susceptible to recruitment (Leitsalu et al, 2014) and mortality (Conley & Sotoudeh, 2016) selection. For instance, more educated, socioeconomically advantaged and healthier individuals are more likely to survive to be eligible to participate in genetic sampling in biobanks.…”

Section: The Heterogeneity Of Main Findingsmentioning

confidence: 86%

“…Due to such ambiguities, phenotypic correlations between life-history traits that are measured at the level of individuals are difficult to interpret in an evolutionary context (Ellis, Figueredo, Brumbach, & Schlomer, 2009). In intergenerational studies, this problem can be indirectly circumvented by taking advantage of fact that children inherit 50% of each of their parents' genomes, so that the phenotype of offspring is used as a proxy measure of parental genotype (see Conley & Sotoudeh, 2016). For instance, measuring the rate of maturation in the offspring and age at death of their parents enables to exclude some of the potentially confounding effects of external factors that could affect the maturation and lifespan simultaneously when both are measured in the same individual.…”

Section: Why Would Rate Of Maturation Associate With Parental Lifespan?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such data sets would enable finer classification of growth environments and causes of death of participants and their parents on the basis of living conditions and epidemiological situations that differ between birth cohorts and social strata. Such intergenerational studies would offer novel opportunities for uncovering the patterns of human life-history evolution, provided that researchers acknowledge the inherent biases, stemming from nonrandom sampling of population (Conley & Sotoudeh, 2016).…”

Section: Interaction Between Daughters' Menarcheal Age and Quality Of...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Parents of early‐maturing girls die younger

Hõrak

Valge

Fischer

et al. 2019

Evolutionary Applications

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According to the life‐history theory, rates of sexual maturation have coevolved with mortality rates so that individuals who mature faster tend to die younger. We used two data sets, providing different markers for the speed of pubertal development to test whether rates of sexual maturation of women predict the age at death of their parents. In the data set of Estonian schoolgirls born between 1936 and 1961, the rate of breast development predicted lifespan of both mothers and fathers (irrespectively of their socio‐economic position), so that parents of rapidly maturing girls died at younger age. This finding supports the view that fast maturation rates in humans have coevolved with short lifespans and that such trade‐offs can be detected as intergenerational phenotypic correlations in modern populations. Menarcheal age of participants of Estonian Biobank (born between 1925 and 1996) did not predict the age of death of their mothers; however, it did predict survival of their fathers, but only in environment where the genetic variation is exposed (families where at least one parent had tertiary education). In such families (where girls also matured 0.2–0.4 years earlier than in poorly educated families), 1‐year delay in daughter's menarche corresponded to 9% lower hazard of father's death. Heritability of menarcheal age was also highest in well‐educated families. The latter findings are consistent with the idea that genetic differences in the rate of pubertal maturation may be expressed most clearly in well‐off families because in such families, the contribution of environmental variance to total phenotypic variance in menarcheal age is smallest. Our findings suggest that with global improvement and equalization of growth conditions, reductions of environmental variation in the rate of maturation increasingly expose the genetic differences in menarcheal age to selection. Under such conditions, selection on menarcheal age has a potential to affect the evolution of lifespan.

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Section: Interaction Between Daughters' Menarcheal Age and Quality mentioning

confidence: 63%

Section: The Heterogeneity Of Main Findingsmentioning

confidence: 86%

Section: Why Would Rate Of Maturation Associate With Parental Lifespan?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Interaction Between Daughters' Menarcheal Age and Quality Of...mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Parents of early‐maturing girls die younger

Hõrak

Valge

Fischer

et al. 2019

Evolutionary Applications

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…However, measuring phenotypic correlations between lifespan vs. other traits of interest at the level of individuals (though interesting on its own merit) does not enable to distinguish between phenotypic and microevolutionary trade-offs. In intergenerational studies, this problem can be indirectly circumvented by taking advantage of the fact that children inherit 50% of each of their parents' genomes so that the phenotype ( 24 – 26 ) or genotype ( 20 , 27 , 28 ) of offspring is used as a proxy measure of parental genotype [see ( 29 )]. For instance, measuring the body mass index (BMI) in the offspring and age at death of their parents enables to exclude some of the potentially confounding effects of external factors such as ill health that could affect the BMI and lifespan simultaneously when both are measured in the same individual ( 24 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mothers of small-bodied children and fathers of vigorous sons live longer

Valge

Meitern²,

Hõrak³

2023

Front. Public Health

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Life-history traits (traits directly related to survival and reproduction) co-evolve and materialize through physiology and behavior. Accordingly, lifespan can be hypothesized as a potentially informative marker of life-history speed that subsumes the impact of diverse morphometric and behavioral traits. We examined associations between parental longevity and various anthropometric traits in a sample of 4,000–11,000 Estonian children in the middle of the 20th century. The offspring phenotype was used as a proxy measure of parental genotype, so that covariation between offspring traits and parental longevity (defined as belonging to the 90th percentile of lifespan) could be used to characterize the aggregation between longevity and anthropometric traits. We predicted that larger linear dimensions of offspring associate with increased parental longevity and that testosterone-dependent traits associate with reduced paternal longevity. Twelve of 16 offspring traits were associated with mothers' longevity, while three traits (rate of sexual maturation of daughters and grip strength and lung capacity of sons) robustly predicted fathers' longevity. Contrary to predictions, mothers of children with small bodily dimensions lived longer, and paternal longevity was not linearly associated with their children's body size (or testosterone-related traits). Our study thus failed to find evidence that high somatic investment into brain and body growth clusters with a long lifespan across generations, and/or that such associations can be detected on the basis of inter-generational phenotypic correlations.

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Genotyping the dead: Using offspring as proxy to estimate the genetic correlation of education and longevity

Cited by 2 publications

References 17 publications

Parents of early‐maturing girls die younger

Parents of early‐maturing girls die younger

Mothers of small-bodied children and fathers of vigorous sons live longer

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