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. We measured differences in 5mC levels across aintergenic, promoter, and genebody at postnatal day 7 and postnatal day 90 in the amygdala of female offspring. N=4 per treatment per age