Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-15-2018

Publication Title

PLOS One

Volume

13

Issue

2

Pages

1-28

Abstract

We investigated maternal obesity in inbred SM/J mice by assigning females to a high-fat diet or a low-fat diet at weaning, mating them to low-fat-fed males, cross-fostering the offspring to low-fat-fed SM/J nurses at birth, and weaning the offspring onto a high-fat or low-fat diet. A maternal high-fat diet exacerbated obesity in the high-fat-fed daughters, causing them to weigh more, have more fat, and have higher serum levels of leptin as adults, accompanied by dozens of gene expression changes and thousands of DNA methylation changes in their livers and hearts. Maternal diet particularly affected genes involved in RNA processing, immune response, and mitochondria. Between one-quarter and one-third of differentially expressed genes contained a differentially methylated region associated with maternal diet. An offspring high-fat diet reduced overall variation in DNA methylation, increased body weight and organ weights, increased long bone lengths and weights, decreased insulin sensitivity, and changed the expression of 3,908 genes in the liver. Although the offspring were more affected by their own diet, their maternal diet had epigenetic effects lasting through adulthood, and in the daughters these effects were accompanied by phenotypic changes relevant to obesity and diabetes.

Comments

Author Posting. © The Authors 2018. This article is posted here by permission of James M. Cheverud for personal use, not for redistribution. The article was published in PLOS One, vol. 13, no. 2, 2018, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0192606

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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