Epigenetic Transgenerational Alterations to Stress Response in Brain Gene Networks and Behaviour
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ABSTRACT: Ancestral environmental exposures that promote epigenetic transgenerational inheritance influence all aspects of an individual’s life history. Stress experienced during adolescence can affect adult physiological and behavioural phenotypes. The current study utilized a systems biology approach to investigate the interactions of these two forms of epigenetic modification, one carried in the germline transgenerationally and the other contained in the context of life history. A transgenerational epigenetic imprint left by the fungicide vinclozolin promoted regional specific brain gene networks that influenced chronic restraint stress responses to alter adult physiological, brain and behavioural phenotypes. The environmentally-induced epigenetic transgenerational inheritance was found to interact with early life stress response to impact the adult brain genome activity to bring “the phenotype into being”. We used microarrays to determine genes expressed differentially in rats' 4 brain areas - basolateral amygdala (BLA), primary and secondary motor cortex (Crtx), CA1 of the hippocampus (CA1), and CA3 of the hippocampus (CA3) - due to Vinclozolin treatments of their grand-grandmothers and/or to stress in adolescence age. For each of 4 brain areas (BLA, CRTX, CA1, and CA3), RNA samples from 4 treatment groups - stressed control (St-Con), non-stressed control (NSt-Con), stressed vinclozolin (St-Vin), and non-stressed vinclozolin (NSt-Vin) - were compared to each other. Each treatment groups contained 3 biological replica. RNA for each replica was pooled from 4 individual animals forming a certain dyad group.
ORGANISM(S): Rattus norvegicus
SUBMITTER: Michael Skinner
PROVIDER: E-GEOD-26737 | biostudies-arrayexpress |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-arrayexpress
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