Comparative analysis of the effect of different diets on histone H3K4me3 distribution in mouse liver chromatin reveals the epigenetic efficacy of cyanidin-3-O-glucoside dietary intake

Background: Different diets result in significantly different phenotypes through metabolic and genomic reprogramming. Epigenetic marks, identified in humans and mouse models upon caloric restriction, high fat diet or the intake of specific bioactives, suggest that genomic reprogramming drives this reprogramming and mediates the effect of nutrition on health. Histone modifications encode the epigenetic signal that adapts genome functions to environmental conditions, including diets, by tuning the structure and properties of chromatin. So far, the effect of different diets on the genome-wide distribution of critical histone marks has not been determined Methods: We investigated by chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing the distribution of the trimethylation of lysine 4 of histone H3 in the liver of mice fed for one year with five different diets including: chow containing corn powder as extra source of plant bioactives or specifically enriched with the cyanidin-3-O-glucoside, high fat enriched obesogenic and caloric restricted pro-longevity diets Conclusions: The comparison of the resulting histone mark profiles revealed functional food containing cyanidin determines broad effect. Overall design: Fifteen C57Bl/6 females, belonging to 6 litters, were randomly divided in 5 groups (n=3 mice/group) at the age of three months and each group was fed for ten months with the following five different diets: 1) calorie restriction (CR); 2) high fat-diet ad libitum (HF); 3) purple corn-based ad libitum (RD); 4) yellow corn-based ad libitum (YD); 5) standard diet ad libitum (SD)