Your offspring is what you eat: The impact of maternal CAF diet on the epigenetic control of dopaminergic-related genes during perinatal period

STOKER C; VARAYOUD J; ROSSETTI MF; LAZZARINO GP; RAMOS JG; SCHUMACHER R; ANDREOLI MF

Congreso; Neuroscience 2018; 2018

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter crucial for motor, motivational, and reward-relatedfunctions of the central nervous system. Our aim was to determine the effect of apalatable maternal diet on the transcriptional regulation of genes involved indopaminergic pathways during perinatal period in the offspring. Wistar female ratsreceived a diet composed of standard chow (CON) and/or cafeteria ?junk-food?(CAF)from weaning and during 120 days (N=10/group).After mating, dams weremaintained on their respective diets. Female offspring from CON and CAF damswere sacrificed on embryonic day 21 (E21) and postnatal day 10 (PND10)(N=16/group). This experimental model allowed us to study the individual andcombined effects of age (E21 vs. PND10) and maternal diet (CON vs. CAF). Usingmicropunch techniques, ventral tegmental area (VTA) and accumbens nucleus(NAc) were isolated from offspring ́s brains. Bioinformatic analysis of the promoterregions,mRNAquantificationandmethylationstudiesweredone(N=8/group).Each sample was quantified in duplicate. Our results showed anincrease in mRNA expression of tyroxinehidroxylase (TH), dopamine receptor(DRD)1 and ghrelin receptor (GHSR)from E21 to PND10 in the offspring ofCONfed-dams(p