Maternal high-fat-diet alters lactation-specific miRNA expression and programs the DNA methylome in female offspring

Reduced representation bisulfite sequencing was used to explore differentially methylated regions and sites within the amygdala of female rat offspring during earlylife and adulthood, in response to maternal high fat diet exposure. DMRs shared across early life and adulthood included pathways involved in neurodevelopment and genes regulating the DNMT machinery and protein function. To our knowledge, this is the first study to identify persistent genome-wide DNA methylation modifications associated with mHFD exposure in offspring from early life to adulthood.本研究采用简化代表性亚硫酸氢盐测序（Reduced representation bisulfite sequencing），旨在探究雌性大鼠后代在生命早期与成年阶段，暴露于母体高脂饮食后其杏仁核内的差异甲基化区域与位点。生命早期与成年阶段共有的差异甲基化区域涉及神经发育相关通路，以及调控DNA甲基转移酶（DNMT）系统与蛋白质功能的基因。据我们所知，本研究首次在从生命早期到成年的子代中，鉴定出与母体高脂饮食（maternal high fat diet，mHFD）暴露相关的持续性全基因组DNA甲基化修饰。