Vitamin C-Dependent Intergenerational Inheritance of Enhanced Endurance Performance Following Maternal Exercise

In order to investigate the effect of maternal exercise on the athletic performance of offspring mice and the epigenetic mechanism of intergenerational genetic effects, we randomly divided C57BL/6 mice into a control group (M-Con) and an exercise group (M-Ex). Among them, the M-Ex group mice received treadmill training before and during pregnancy, while the M-Con group maintained sedentary lifestyle throughout the entire experimental. Both groups of mice were mated with age-matched wild-type male mice to obtain F1 generation mice, and skeletal muscle samples of F1 generation mice were collected at weaning. After normal feeding of other F1 generation female mice to 8 weeks of age, F2 generation mice were obtained by mating M-Con group F1 generation (F1 Con) and M-Ex group F1 generation (F1 Ex) female mice with age-matched wild-type male mice and skeletal muscle samples were collected when the F2 generation mice were weaned. DNA methylation capture sequencing was performed on skeletal muscle samples from F1 Con, F1 Ex, and F2 Ex groups of mice to investigate the effect of maternal exercise on DNA methylation reprogramming in offspring mice. In addition, by comparing the common differential methylation sites between F1 Con VS. F1 Ex and F1 Con VS. F2 Ex, we investigated the transgenerational effects of maternal exercise on DNA methylation reprogramming in offspring skeletal muscles.