Demographic and evolutionary trends in ovarian function and aging

Laisk, Triin; Tšuiko, Olga; Jatsenko, Tatjana; Hõrak, Peeter; Otala, Marjut; Lahdenperä, Mirkka; Lummaa, Virpi; Tuuri, Timo; Salumets, Andres; Tapanainen, Juha S.

doi:10.1093/humupd/dmy031

Cited by 43 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 159 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Age at first reproduction. The age at which reproduction begins can be of greater importance for determining the length of an individual's reproductive career than the less variable age of reproductive cessation 55 . Whilst women in this population did not co-reside pre-maritally with the paternal grandmother (their future mother-in-law), the paternal grandmother could still potentially accelerate the onset of reproduction by influencing who and when her son married.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Offspring fertility and grandchild survival enhanced by maternal grandmothers in a pre-industrial human society

Chapman

Lahdenperä

Pettay

et al. 2021

Sci Rep

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Help is directed towards kin in many cooperative species, but its nature and intensity can vary by context. Humans are one of few species in which grandmothers invest in grandchildren, and this may have served as an important driver of our unusual life history. But helping behaviour is hardly uniform, and insight into the importance of grandmothering in human evolution depends on understanding the contextual expression of helping benefits. Here, we use an eighteenth-nineteenth century pre-industrial genealogical dataset from Finland to investigate whether maternal or paternal grandmother presence (lineage relative to focal individuals) differentially affects two key fitness outcomes of descendants: fertility and survival. We found grandmother presence shortened spacing between births, particularly at younger mother ages and earlier birth orders. Maternal grandmother presence increased the likelihood of focal grandchild survival, regardless of whether grandmothers had grandchildren only through daughters, sons, or both. In contrast, paternal grandmother presence was not associated with descendants’ fertility or survival. We discuss these results in terms of current hypotheses for lineage differences in helping outcomes.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Offspring fertility and grandchild survival enhanced by maternal grandmothers in a pre-industrial human society

Chapman

Lahdenperä

Pettay

et al. 2021

Sci Rep

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Individual‐level associations between lifespan and rate of sexual maturation may reflect either within‐population polymorphisms in antagonistic pleiotropic effects (Corbett, Courtiol, Lummaa, Moorad, & Stearns, ; Laisk et al, ) or induced phenotypic responses to womb or childhood environment (Lea, Tung, Archie, & Alberts, ; Wells, ). For instance, the risk of developing diseases related to metabolic syndrome among early‐maturing women might appear inevitable consequence of (initially adaptive) plastic response of a “thrifty phenotype” to low maternal investment in utero (Wells, ), but also result from the overlap of genomic loci associated with early menarche with genes implicated in metabolic diseases (Day et al, ; Perry et al, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parents of early‐maturing girls die younger

Hõrak

Valge

Fischer

et al. 2019

Evolutionary Applications

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

“…Meiosis initiates at 11–12 weeks of gestation in humans (Hunt and Hassold 2008 ), whereas it starts around 13 day post coitum (dpc) in mice (McLaren and Southee 1997 ). During fetal life, meiosis proceeds through the prophase I events synapsis and recombination, but is arrested in meiosis I until ovulation (Laisk et al 2019 ). FSH and luteinizing hormone (LH) secreted by the pituitary from puberty onwards trigger exit from prophase I arrest, and primary oocytes complete the first meiotic division prior to ovulation, which will be discussed later.…”

Section: Adverse Outcome Pathways As They Relate To Key Processes In mentioning

confidence: 99%

Putative adverse outcome pathways for female reproductive disorders to improve testing and regulation of chemicals

et al. 2020

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Modern living challenges female reproductive health. We are witnessing a rise in reproductive disorders and drop in birth rates across the world. The reasons for these manifestations are multifaceted and most likely include continuous exposure to an ever-increasing number of chemicals. The cause–effect relationships between chemical exposure and female reproductive disorders, however, have proven problematic to determine. This has made it difficult to assess the risks chemical exposures pose to a woman’s reproductive development and function. To address this challenge, this review uses the adverse outcome pathway (AOP) concept to summarize current knowledge about how chemical exposure can affect female reproductive health. We have a special focus on effects on the ovaries, since they are essential for lifelong reproductive health in women, being the source of both oocytes and several reproductive hormones, including sex steroids. The AOP framework is widely accepted as a new tool for toxicological safety assessment that enables better use of mechanistic knowledge for regulatory purposes. AOPs equip assessors and regulators with a pragmatic network of linear cause–effect relationships, enabling the use of a wider range of test method data in chemical risk assessment and regulation. Based on current knowledge, we propose ten putative AOPs relevant for female reproductive disorders that can be further elaborated and potentially be included in the AOPwiki. This effort is an important step towards better safeguarding the reproductive health of all girls and women.

show abstract

Demographic and evolutionary trends in ovarian function and aging

Cited by 43 publications

References 159 publications

Offspring fertility and grandchild survival enhanced by maternal grandmothers in a pre-industrial human society

Offspring fertility and grandchild survival enhanced by maternal grandmothers in a pre-industrial human society

Parents of early‐maturing girls die younger

Putative adverse outcome pathways for female reproductive disorders to improve testing and regulation of chemicals

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About