Gestational diabetes exposure induces an altered cardiac transcriptome that is associated with impaired cardiac function in the rat offspring

Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is the most common complication of pregnancy. Children of mothers with GDM are at an increased risk for the development of cardiometabolic disease later in life, though the mechanisms responsible for this observation are unknown. We propose that an altered cardiac transcriptome, programmed in utero, may be a contributing mechanism to cardiometabolic disease development and hypothesize that the hearts of offspring exposed to GDM will exhibit altered gene expression pathways. The purpose of this project will be to study alterations in the cardiac transcriptome of young adult rat offspring after exposure to GDM to investigate the mechanisms responsible for the developmental origins of cardiovascular disease. To induce gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) female Sprague-Dawley rats were fed a high fat and sucrose (HFS) diet prior to mating, throughout pregnancy and lactation. Lean control females received a low fat (LF) diet. Offspring were randomly assigned to HFS or LF diets after weaning at 3-weeks of age. Cardiac tissue was collected from the four groups of young-adult rat offspring at 3-months of age (n=6 Lean-LF, n=6 Lean-HFS, n=6 GDM-LF and n=6 GDM-HFS) for biochemical and gene expression (RNA-seq) analysis.