Some 15 percent of adults suffer from fertility problems, many of these due to genetic factors. This is something of a paradox: We might expect such genes, which reduce an individual’s ability to reproduce, to disappear from the population. Research at the Weizmann Institute of Science that recently appeared in Nature Communications may now have solved this riddle. Not only can it explain the high rates of male fertility problems, it may open new avenues in understanding the causes of genetic diseases and their treatment.
Various theories explain the survival of harmful mutations: A gene that today causes obesity, for example may have once granted an evolutionary advantage, or disease-causing gene may persist because it is passed on in a small, relatively isolated population.
Dr. Moran Gershoni, a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Professor Shmuel Pietrokovski of the Molecular Genetics Department, decided to investigate another approach — one based on differences between males and females. Although males and females carry nearly identical sets of genes, many are activated differently in each sex. So natural selection works differently on the same genes in males and females.
Read the full, original story: Mutations from Venus, mutations from Mars: Why genetic fertility problems can persist in a population
