Regulation of Fetal Liver Growth in a Model of Diet Restriction in the Pregnant Rat

The present study was designed to test the hypothesis that limited growth of the fetal liver in the model of maternal fasting is independent of well-characterized signaling mechanisms that are known to regulate somatic growth in adult animals. We profiled the fetal hepatic transcriptome and translatome in control (n=3) and IUGR (n=3) fetuses. To induce IUGR, pregnant dams were fasted for 48hr starting on E17, term being 21 days. Fetal rats were delivered by C-section and livers were removed. All livers were flash frozen in liquid nitrogen. RNA was extracted from polysomes that were generated using sucrose density fraction, as well as total liver. RNA was hybridized to Affymetrix GeneChip Rat Gene 1.0 ST Arrays.