Hilary C Martin, Ryan Christ, Julie G Hussin, Jared O'Connell, Scott Gordon, Hamdi Mbarek, Jouke-Jan Hottenga, Kerrie McAloney, Gonnecke Willemsen, Paolo Gasparini, Nicola Pirastu, Grant W Montgomery, Pau Navarro, Nicole Soranzo, Daniela Toniolo, Veronique Vitart, James F Wilson, Jonathan Marchini, Dorret I Boomsma, Nicholas G Martin, Peter Donnelly
Several studies have reported that the number of crossovers increases with maternal age in humans, but others have found the opposite. Resolving the true effect has implications for understanding the maternal age effect on aneuploidies. Here, we revisit this question in the largest sample to date using single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)-chip data, comprising over 6,000 meioses from nine cohorts. We develop and fit a hierarchical model to allow for differences between cohorts and between mothers. We estimate that over 10 years, the expected number of maternal crossovers increases by 2...
August 5, 2015: Nature Communications