Impact of prepubertal nutritional modulation on bull sperm DNA methylation

Our objective was to evaluate the methylation changes in sperm of bulls exposed to different pre-pubertal diets. One-week-old Holstein bull calves (n=9), randomly allocated to 3 groups, were fed either a high, medium or low-diet (20%, 17% or 12.2% Crude protein and 67.9%, 66% or 62.9% Total digestible nutrients, respectively) from 2 to 32 weeks of age, followed by medium-nutrition. Semen collected from bulls at two specific time points; 55-59 and 69-71 weeks was diluted, cryopreserved and used for reduced representation bisulfite sequencing. Differential methylation was detected for dietary treatment, but minimal differences were detected with age.