The impact of paternal age and nutrition on offspring fitness

长期以来，人们都知道母亲除了传递基因外，还能以多种方式影响后代的健康状况。不太明显的是，父亲的条件和环境会影响他们的精子，从而影响后代的质量。父亲的不良饮食现在被认为会导致后代的代谢紊乱，而父亲的高龄可能会损害后代的大脑发育。然而，我们对这种影响的原因和后果仍然知之甚少。进展的一个主要障碍是，这些影响对人类和其他哺乳动物的研究具有挑战性。为了克服这一障碍，推动这一领域向前发展，我计划利用一种理解动物进化和生理学的主要替代模型--果蝇（Drosophila melanogaster）。果蝇已经是衰老、饮食和神经生物学研究的主要模型系统。它的寿命很短;它很简单，遗传特征很好。这使得果蝇成为实验研究以及研究进化（为什么）和机械（如何）问题的理想对象。关于果蝇，我将解决父系效应研究中的三个主要问题：1）为什么会发生？2)它们如何影响后代？（3）是什么原因造成的？在牛津大学，我将把联合收割机大规模的进化实验与尖端的分子方法结合起来，建立一个重大的新研究计划，以了解这些重要而迷人的效应的各个方面。

Mothers have long been known to influence their offspring's condition in many ways other than just transmitting genes. Less obvious is that the condition and environment of fathers can affect their sperm and, as a result, the quality of their offspring. Poor paternal diet is now thought to cause metabolic disorders in offspring, and advanced paternal age may harm offspring brain development. However, we still know little about the causes and consequences of such effects. A major barrier to progress is that these effects are challenging to study in humans and other mammals. To overcome this barrier and push the field forward, I plan to make use of one of the major alternative models for understanding animal evolution and physiology, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.The fruit fly is already a major model system for studies of ageing, diet and neurobiology. It has a short lifespan; it is simple and genetically well characterized. These make the fruit fly ideal for experimental study and the study of both evolutionary (why) and mechanistic (how) questions. With the fruit fly, I will tackle three of the major open questions in the study of paternal effects: 1) Why do they occur? 2) How do they impact offspring? and finally 3) What causes them? At the University of Oxford, I will combine large-scale evolutionary experiments with cutting-edge molecular methods and establish a major new research program to understand all aspects of these important and fascinating effects.