Fig. 6

Altered genes as a result of paternal obesity, smoking, and EDCs. Several studies have demonstrated that paternal lifestyle and environmental factors can influence the expression of a number of genes and transcriptional factors, which are responsible for cellular transport, localisation, and metabolism during spermatogenesis and embryo development, by hypo- or hypermethylation DNA sequence. This may, in turn, result in deleterious effects both in fathers, namely disrupted production of sperm and steroid sex hormones, resulting in male infertility, and in the offspring, predisposing to metabolic, structural defects, and cancer formation. Figure was created with Biorender.com