A growing number of studies in multicellular organisms highlight low or moderate frequencies of paternal transmission of cytoplasmic organelles, including both mitochondria and chloroplasts. It is well established that strict maternal inheritance is selectively blind to cytoplasmic elements that are deleterious to males - 'mother's curse'. But it is not known how sensitive this conclusion is to...

Postnatal myofibre characteristics and muscle mass are largely determined during fetal development and may be significantly affected by epigenetic parent-of-origin effects. However, data on such effects in prenatal muscle development that could help understand unexplained variation in postnatal muscle traits are lacking. In a bovine model we studied effects of distinct maternal and paternal gen...

Forces shaping an individual's phenotype are complex and include transgenerational effects. Despite low investment into reproduction, a father's environment and phenotype can shape its offspring's phenotype. Whether and when such paternal effects are adaptive, however, remains elusive. Using three-spined sticklebacks in controlled infection experiments, we show that sperm deficiencies in expose...

Parental age has profound consequences for offspring’s phenotype. However, whether patrilineal affects offspring sperm production remains unknown, despite the importance of male reproductive success in species facing post-copulatory sexual selection. Using a longitudinal dataset on ejaculate attributes houbara bustard, we showed that sired by old fathers had different age-dependent trajectories...

In humans, it is widely demonstrated that maternal obesity negatively affects fertility, pregnancy outcomes and offspring’s health. Less is known about the effects of paternal obesity on fertility and offspring’s development. Recent observations in animal models show that dietinduced obese males have impaired sperm quality, delayed preimplantation growth of the fertilized oocyte, and reduced im...

Asthma is a hereditary disease associated with IgE-mediated reaction. Whether maternal atopy and paternal atopy have different impacts on perinatal IgE production and asthma development remains unclear. This paper reviews and summarizes the effects of maternal and paternal atopy on the developmental aspects of IgE production and asthma. Maternal atopy affects both pre- and postnatal IgE product...

While there is a well-established literature on the detrimental effects of maternal depression on infant-mother interaction and on infant development, the association between paternal postpartum depression and infant development has been rarely investigated. The relative newness of research on paternal postpartum depression, inconsistent research methods, lack of standardized guidelines, clinic...

Although the adverse effects of maternal aging on reproductive outcomes have been investigated widely, there is no consensus on the impact of paternal age. Therefore, we investigated the effect of paternal age on reproductive outcomes in a retrospective analysis of 9,991 in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycles performed at the Reproductive Medicine Center of the Third Affiliated Hospital of Guangzh...