While they can kill germs, they may also contribute to the growing problem of "super germs" that antibiotics cannot fight.
Since these epigenetic effects occur in organs that neighbor the exposed tissues, it is possible that germ cells may also be affected through a bystander process, thereby causing heritable defects in the offspring.
Finally, recently reported results have suggested that inherited, germ-line factors may also explain differential benefit and toxicity between patients treated with endocrine therapies.
Other tumours including breast and ovarian cancers and germ cell tumours may also benefit from this approach (Bay et al, 2000, 2002; Pedrazzoli et al, 2002; Hanel et al, 2003; Donato et al, 2004), which is thought to exert its major antitumour effect via donor immune cells active against recipient malignancy (known as the graft-versus-tumour or GVT effect).
Most of this is likely to be a direct effect on germ cell function, but there may also be a contribution from dry ejaculation which was reported as 'quite a bit' or 'very much' in 3% or more patients after chemotherapy compared to surveillance.
In addition to DNA methylation, the nuclear chromatin environments within germ cells and/or tumour cells may also be important for long-range transcriptional control over large genomic regions, because LOCKs, LoDs and the partially methylated domains found in colorectal cancer are correlated with nuclear lamina-associated domains.
While this might facilitate the fast recovery after the severe loss of germ cells induced by busulfan, it may also influence the behavior of transplanted cells.
In contrast, the murine T cell repertoire is generally tolerant to germ line-encoded immunoglobulin sequences and may also be actively tolerized to individual Id epitopes [ 12].
Therefore, the close relationship of mitochondria with germ plasm constituents during early gametogenesis may also be related to the preservation of mtDNA integrity [ 42].
