Born to be young? Prenatal thyroid hormones increase early-life telomere length in wild collared flycatchers.

ABSTRACT: The underlying mechanisms of the lifelong consequences of prenatal environmental condition on health and ageing remain little understood. Thyroid hormones (THs) are important regulators of embryogenesis, transferred from the mother to the embryo. Since prenatal THs can accelerate early-life development, we hypothesized that this might occur at the expense of resource allocation in somatic maintenance processes, leading to premature ageing. Therefore, we investigated the consequences of prenatal TH supplementation on potential hallmarks of ageing in a free-living avian model in which we previously demonstrated that experimentally elevated prenatal TH exposure accelerates early-life growth. Using cross-sectional sampling, we first report that mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) copy number and telomer

SUBMITTER: Stier A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7728670 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature