Impacts of diet and exercise on maternal gut microbiota are transferred to offspring.

We investigated whether wheel running exercise prior-to and during pregnancy and prolonged feeding of an obesogenic diet were associated with changes in the gut microbiomes of Sprague-Dawley rat dams and their offspring. Female rats were fed either chow or obesogenic diet, and half of each diet group were given access to a running wheel 10 days before mating until delivery, while others remained sedentary. 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing was used to assess gut microbial communities in dams and their male and female offspring around the time of weaning.