Effects of father's diet on fetus

Father's diet before conception can impact newborn's health, low carbohydrate and high protein diet can make the fetus healthy. Experiments were performed on fruit flies and the results showed offspring were less likely to survive if their fathers consumed a poor diet of high carbohydrates and low protein.

The insects were used because they have 60 percent of human genes.
Researchers mated male fruit flies with females after they altered their diet.
Since fruit flies share similar genes to that of humans, the researchers believe the impacts of the bugs' diet would correlate with that of men.

The study claims that men who want to become fathers should have a diet consisting of fish, meat, vegetables and fruit while cutting out pasta, rice and white bread. Sugary foods such as sweets, cakes and biscuits should be avoided. Exposure to toxins can be passed from the father to his offspring through his semen. During the experiment, female fruit flies were fed the same diet while males had different ones consisting of yeast and sugars.

The insects ate different foods, from low to high concentrations of proteins, carbohydrates and calories. After some days the males were mated with two females. The results showed that embryos were more likely to survive if they had a father with a high protein and low carbohydrates diet. Mortality was highest for offspring of males given a high carbohydrate, low protein diet. Researchers also found a connection between the male's body condition and his offspring's mortality.
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Genes are expressed differently in men and women

Men and women differ in obvious ways for example, in the prevalence of certain diseases or reactions to drugs.

Weizmann Institute of Science researchers recently uncovered thousands of human genes that are expressed out to make proteins differently in the two sexes.

Pietrokovski and Gershoni showed that mutations in genes specific to sperm formation persist precisely because the genes are expressed only in men.

 A mutation that is problematic for only half of the population, no matter how detrimental, is freely passed on to the next generation by the other half.

In this study, the researchers expanded their analyses to include genes that, though not necessary for fertility, are still expressed differently in the two sexes.

 To identify these genes, the scientists used a very large study of human gene expression recorded for numerous organs and tissues in the bodies of close to 550 adult donors.

Pietrokovski and Gershoni looked closely at around 20,000 protein-coding genes, sorting them by sex and searching for differences in expression in each tissue. They eventually identified around 6,500 genes with activity that was biased toward one sex or the other in at least one tissue.

For example, they found genes that were highly expressed in the skin of men relative to that in women's skin, and they realized that these were related to the growth of body hair. Gene expression for muscle building was higher in men; storage were higher in women.
Apart from the sexual organs, the researchers discovered quite a few sex-linked genes in the mammary glands -- not so surprising, except that about half of these genes were expressed in men.

The researchers also identified gene expression in the liver in women that regulates drug metabolism, providing molecular evidence for the known difference in drug processing between women and men.