Female- and male-specific transcriptomic and epigenetic placental signatures in response to a maternal high fat diet in mice

Overnutrition during pregnancy influences the future health of the offspring, with outcomes differing depending on the child’s sex. The placenta is involved in the programming of obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Sex-specific adaptation of the placenta may be central to the differences in fetal growth and survival. The impact of diet and fetal sex on placental gene expression and epigenetic marks was investigated in mice fed a high-fat (HFD) or a control diet (CD), during the first 15 days of gestation Microarrays analysis revealed that expression was affected by maternal diet and was sexually dimorphic. We analyzed the placentae of 4 mice litters fed with an high-fat diet (HFD) and 4 with a control diet (CD). For each litter, the placenta transcriptome was analysed according to the foetus sex using the Affymetrix Human Exon 1.0 ST platform. Array data was processed by Affymetrix Exon Array Computational Tool. No technical replicates were performed.