Are you also what Your Mother Eats? Distinct Proteomic Portrait as a Result of Maternal High-Fat Diet in the Cerebral Cortex of the Adult Mouse.

Background: Epidemiological studies suggest an association between maternal obesity and adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes in offspring. Objective: To compare the global proteomic portrait in the cerebral cortex between mice born to mothers on a high-fat or control diet who themselves were fed a high-fat or control diet. Methods: Male mice born to dams fed a control (C) or high fat (H) diet four weeks before conception and during gestation and lactation were assigned to either C or H diet at weaning. Mice (n=24) were sacrificed at 19-weeks and their cerebral cortices were pooled into 8 samples and analysed using an iTRAQ based 2D LC-MS methodology. Results: A total of 6,695 proteins were identified and fully quantified (q<0.01). Approximately 10% of these proteins demonstrated a minimum of one Standard Deviation of regulation across all biological replicates in at least one of the experimental groups (CH, HC, HH) relative to the control (CC). Principal component analysis and hierarchical clustering analysis showed that mice clustered based on the diet of the mother and not their current diet. In silico bioinformatics analysis revealed that maternal high-fat diet was significantly associated with response to hypoxia/oxidative stress and apoptosis in the cerebral cortex of the adult offspring. Conclusion: Maternal high-fat diet was associated with distinct endophenotypic changes of the adult mouse cerebral cortex independent of the diet of the offspring. The identified modulated proteins could represent novel therapeutic targets for the prevention of neuropathological features resulting from maternal obesity.