In this episode, we delve into the world of radiation biology with Dr. Siyao Wang. We explore the long-standing question of how paternal exposure to ionizing radiation affects genetic inheritance and disease risk in the offspring. This subject is of particular relevance considering that nearly 80% of transmitted mutations in humans arise from the paternal germline.

Dr. Wang shares insights from her research using Caenorhabditis elegans strains, which reveal that paternal, not maternal, exposure to ionizing radiation leads to transgenerational embryonic lethality. The offspring of irradiated males display numerous genome instability phenotypes, such as DNA fragmentation, chromosomal rearrangement, and aneuploidy. Intriguingly, the repair process for paternal DNA double strand breaks involves maternally provided error-prone polymerase theta-m ...