Broad epigenetic signature of maternal care in the brain of adult rats (expression)
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ABSTRACT: Maternal care is associated with long-term effects on behavior and epigenetic programming of the NR3C1 (GLUCOCORTICOID RECEPTOR) gene in the hippocampus of both rats and humans. However, epigenetic changes at a single gene promoter are unlikely to account for the range of responses to the early life environment and the persistent change in expression of hundreds of additional genes in adult rats in response to differences in maternal care. Here we show that natural variations in maternal care are associated with coordinate changes in DNA methylation, chromatin, and gene expression spanning over a hundred kilobase pairs in the hippocampus of adult rats. The offspring of high compared to low maternal care mothers show epigenetic changes in promoters, exons, and gene ends and higher transcriptional activity across many genes, suggesting that a broad epigenetic regulation of gene expression may form part of a coordinated response to early maternal care. We obtained hippocampal samples from adult offspring of rat mothers that differed in the frequency of pup licking/grooming in the first week of life, 4 from high frequency and 4 from low frequency mothers. Using custom-designed microarrays with probes tiling the 7 million base pair region of rat chromosome 18 centered at the NR3C1 gene at 100 bp spacing, we obtained transcription profiles by hybridizing cDNA to microarrays. Each profile was generated in duplicate.
ORGANISM(S): Rattus norvegicus
SUBMITTER: Matthew Suderman
PROVIDER: E-GEOD-20717 | biostudies-arrayexpress |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-arrayexpress
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