Sperm store daddy's weight
Luise Heine has been an editor at since 2012. The qualified biologist studied in Regensburg and Brisbane (Australia) and gained experience as a journalist in television, in the Ratgeber-Verlag and in a print magazine. In addition to her work at , she also writes for children, for example for the Stuttgarter Kinderzeitung, and has her own breakfast blog, “Kuchen zum Frühstück”.
More posts by Luise Heine All content is checked by medical journalists.How carefully men treat themselves can also be read from their sperm. And not only on the swimming qualities or the amount of sperm cells, but also on the information that they pass on during conception.
Sperm travel lightly: a drive tail, a motor and the head in which the DNA is located at the front. However, it is precisely this DNA that is not as static as long thought. Because their packaging also plays a role - the so-called epigenetic factors.
This packaging includes, among other things, molecular “switches” that determine whether a gene is switched on or off - this is done with the help of a chemical change known as methylation. Whether or not the DNA is methylated at certain points is also influenced by lifestyle factors such as smoking, stress or diet - and passed on during conception.
A research group led by Romain Barrès from the University of Copenhagen has shown that sperm cells also carry this information, especially for obesity. They analyzed the sperm of 13 lean and 10 obese men. The result: the sperm cells of the fat men showed different epigenetic markers than the slim ones.
Losing weight changed epigenetics
A second experiment showed that men can consciously change this epigenetic information of their sperm. To do this, the researchers asked six test subjects to give them sperm samples three times each. Once before and once immediately after a stomach reduction surgery, and again one year after the operation. The comparison of the sperm cells showed: The reduced food consumption led to over 4000 structural changes in the sperm DNA. "We were surprised ourselves at how much the epigenetic information changed as a result of this environmental influence," says Barrès.
Influence on children's appetite
Even if the scientists are not quite sure what the differences mean, this is proof that the man's weight influences the information that the sperm pass on at the time of conception. Possibly with consequences for the development of the child: "The markers could, for example, have an influence on the child's appetite," the researchers believe. Her results emphasized the importance of lifestyle at the time of conception.
Better to eat healthy
"What we eat and how active we are shortly before we have a child could have a major impact on the health and development of the offspring," believes Soetkin Versteyhe, co-author of the study. And this applies to men as well as women - because the lifestyle could have consequences that not only affect the children, but also the grandchildren.
At least that's what an epidemiological study carried out in a small Swedish village suggests. Here it was shown that life factors had a long-term influence on the offspring: Grandchildren of people who suffered famine later developed cardiovascular diseases more frequently.
Source: Ida Donkin et al. Obesity and Bariatric Surgery Drive Epigenetic Variation of Spermatozoa in Humans. Cell Metabolism, 2016; (in press) DOI: 10.1016 / j.cmet.2015.11.004
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