GSE40478
Maternal slimming reprograms metabolic gene expression in mice offspring  (mRNA-Seq)
Slimming is globally prevalent especially in young women, and it may contribute to the metabolic health of their offspring. Whereas some Lamarckian ideas about environmental inheritance have been dismissed, increasing evidence suggest that certain acquired traits can be transmitted to the next generation. It is therefore of great interest to determine how and to what extent a maternal lifestyle change contributes to their offspring. Here we show that enriched environment (EE) induced maternal slimming improves general health and reprograms metabolic gene expression in mice offspring. EE in mothers induced decreased body weight, adiposity, and improved glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity. Relative to controls, their offspring exhibited improved general health such as reduced fat accumulation, enhanced metabolic parameters as well as glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity. Maternal slimming altered the expression of 1,732 genes in the liver of offspring, with coherent downregulation of genes involved in lipid and cholesterol biosynthesis. Epigenomic profiling in offspring revealed numerous changes in cytosine methylation depending on maternal slimming, including hypermethylation of several genes involved in lipid biosynthesis, correlated with the downregulation of these genes. Maternal slimming also altered overall transcriptome patterns in mature oocytes, which contributes largely to the metabolic health and gene expression patterns in offspring. Overall, our studies suggest that maternal slimming have a beneficial role in regulating metabolic profiles in offspring, implying that it might be considered as a potential strategy to reverse the global prevalence of obesity and related metabolic syndromes. Overall design: Examination of the effect of 2 different maternal lifestyles, control and slimming, on the mRNA expression in the mature oocytes of the female mice. Naturally ovulated mature oocytes (MII stage) were collected from 3 control and 3 slimming female F0 founders (3 oocytes per mouse, 9 oocytes for each group).