Science is simply common sense at its best that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-95) .


Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Be a good grand father to live longer...

Here is the abstract of the paper in which people have got this finding...
Ref: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=17650472


Selection for long lifespan in men: benefits

of grandfathering?

M. Lahdenpera¨ 1,*, A. F. Russell2 and V. Lummaa2
1Section of Ecology, Department of Biology, University of Turku, 20014 Turku, Finland
2Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK
Life-history theory suggests that individuals should live until their reproductive potential declines, and the
lifespan of human men is consistent with this idea. However, because women can live long after menopause
and this prolonged post-reproductive life can be explained, in part, by the fitness enhancing effects of
grandmothering, an alternative hypothesis is that male lifespan is influenced by the potential to gain fitness
through grandfathering. Here we investigate whether men, who could not gain fitness through
reproduction after their wife’s menopause (i.e. married only once), enhanced their fitness through
grandfathering in historical Finns. Father presence was associated with reductions in offspring age at first
reproduction and birth intervals, but generally not increases in reproductive tenure lengths. Father
presence had little influence on offspring lifetime fecundity and no influence on offspring lifetime
reproductive success. Overall, in contrast to our results for women in the same population, men do not gain
extra fitness (i.e. more grandchildren) through grandfathering. Our results suggest that if evidence for a
‘grandfather’ hypothesis is lacking in a monogamous society, then its general importance in shaping male
lifespan during our more promiscuous evolutionary past is likely to be negligible.

About Me

hi I m doing my Ph.d. in life science from IISc. my field of interest is Virology, molecular biology, and molecular evolutionary biology.
i did my schooling at St. Xavier`s High School, Patna, then i Moved to Pune for my bachelors degree in Microbiology. After i finished my Masters in Biochemistry from MSU - Baroda, i joined IISc in dept of biochemistry with Dr. R. manjunath for my PhD.

I am working on ...

  1. regulation of classical and non-classical HLA expression upon Japanese encephalitis virus ( JEV ) infection.
  2. Activation of gamma-delta T-cell upon Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) infection.