Dataset Information

Interaction does Count: A Cross-Fostering Study on Transgenerational Effects of Pre-reproductive Maternal Enrichment.

ABSTRACT: Pre-reproductive environmental enrichment of female rats influences sensorimotor development and spatial behavior of the offspring, possibly through the changed maternal nurturing. Nevertheless, maternal care could be not the solely responsible for changing offspring developmental trajectories. To disentangle the specific contribution to the transgenerational inheritance of pre- and post-natal factors, a cross-fostering study was performed. Female rats were reared in an enriched environment from weaning to sexual maturity, while control female rats were reared under standard conditions. Following mating with standard-reared males, all females were housed individually. Immediately after delivery, in- or cross-fostering manipulations were performed so that any foster dams received pups born to another dam of the same (in-fostering) or the opposite (cross-fostering) pre-reproductive rearing condition. In lactating dams maternal care and nesting activities were assessed, while in their male pups spatial abilities were assessed through Morris Water Maze (MWM) test at post-natal day 45. Moreover, the expression of Brain-Derived-Neurotrophic-Factor (BDNF) was evaluated in the hippocampus and frontal cortex of dams and pups at weaning. Pre-reproductive maternal environmental enrichment, followed by adoption procedures, loosened its potential in modifying maternal care and offspring developmental trajectories, as indicated by the lack of differences between in-fostered groups of dams and pups. In addition, enriched dams rearing standard pups showed the least complex maternal repertoire (the highest sniffing duration and the lowest nest quality), and their pups showed a reduced spatial learning in the MWM. Nevertheless, pre-reproductive maternal enrichment kept influencing neurotrophic pattern, with enriched dams expressing increased frontal BDNF levels (regardless of the kind of fostered pups), and their offspring expressing increased hippocampal BDNF levels. The present findings enlighten the crucial importance of the early mother-pups interactions in influencing maternal care and offspring phenotype, with the enriched dam-standard pups couple resulting in the most maladaptive encounter. Our study thus sustains that the bidirectional interactions between mother and pups are able to deeply shape offspring phenotype.

SUBMITTER: Caporali P

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4665747 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Interaction does Count: A Cross-Fostering Study on Transgenerational Effects of Pre-reproductive Maternal Enrichment.

Caporali Paola P Cutuli Debora D Gelfo Francesca F Laricchiuta Daniela D Foti Francesca F De Bartolo Paola P Angelucci Francesco F Petrosini Laura L

Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience 20151201

Pre-reproductive environmental enrichment of female rats influences sensorimotor development and spatial behavior of the offspring, possibly through the changed maternal nurturing. Nevertheless, maternal care could be not the solely responsible for changing offspring developmental trajectories. To disentangle the specific contribution to the transgenerational inheritance of pre- and post-natal factors, a cross-fostering study was performed. Female rats were reared in an enriched environment from ...[more]

PMID: 26648854

Similar Datasets

Project description:Mating often bears large costs to females, especially in species with high levels of sexual conflict over mating rates. Given the direct costs to females associated with multiple mating, which include reductions in lifespan and lifetime reproductive success, past research focused on identifying potential indirect benefits (through increases in offspring fitness) that females may accrue. Far less attention has, however, been devoted to understanding how costs of sexual interactions to females may extend across generations. Hence, little is known about the transgenerational implications of variation in mating rates, or the net consequences of maternal sexual activities across generations. Using the seed beetle, Callosobruchus maculatus, a model system for the study of sexual conflict, we investigate the effects of mating with multiple males versus a single male, and tease apart effects due to sexual harassment and those due to mating per se, over three generations. A multigenerational analysis indicated that females that were exposed to ongoing sexual harassment and who also were permitted to mate with multiple males showed no difference in net fitness compared to females that mated just once without ongoing harassment. Intriguingly, however, females that were continually harassed, but permitted to mate just once, suffered a severe decline in net fitness compared to females that were singly (not harassed) or multiply mated (harassed, but potentially gaining benefits via mating with multiple males). Overall, the enhanced fitness in multiply mated compared to harassed females may indicate that multiple mating confers transgenerational benefits. These benefits may counteract, but do not exceed (i.e., we found no difference between singly and multiply mated females), the large transgenerational costs of harassment. Our study highlights the importance of examining transgenerational effects from an inclusive (looking at both indirect benefits but also costs) perspective, and the need to investigate transgenerational effects across several generations if we are to fully understand the consequences of sexual interactions, sexual conflict evolution, and the interplay of sexual conflict and multi-generational costs and benefits.

Project description:Environmental enrichment (EE) is an experimental setting broadly used for investigating the effects of complex social, cognitive, and sensorimotor stimulations on brain structure and function. Recent studies point out that parental EE experience, even occurring in the pre-reproductive phase, affects neural development and behavioral trajectories of the offspring. In the present study we investigated the influences of pre-reproductive EE of female rats on maternal behavior and adolescent male offspring's coping response to an inescapable stressful situation after chronic social isolation. For this purpose female Wistar rats were housed from weaning to breeding age in enriched or standard environments. Subsequently, all females were mated and housed in standard conditions until offspring weaning. On the first post partum day (ppd 1), mother-pup interactions in undisturbed conditions were recorded. Further, after weaning the male pups were reared for 2 weeks under social isolation or in standard conditions, and then submitted or not to a single-session Forced Swim Test (FST). Offspring's neuronal activation and plastic changes were identified by immunohistochemistry for c-Fos and glucocorticoid receptors (GRs), and assessed by using stereological analysis. The biochemical correlates were measured in the hippocampus, amygdala and cingulate cortex, structures involved in hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis regulation. Enriched dams exhibited increased Crouching levels in comparison to standard reared dams. In the offspring of both kinds of dams, social isolation reduced body weight, decreased Immobility, and increased Swimming during FST. Moreover, isolated offspring of enriched dams exhibited higher levels of Climbing in comparison to controls. Interestingly, in the amygdala of both isolated and control offspring of enriched dams we found a lower number of c-Fos immunopositive cells in response to FST and a higher number of GRs in comparison to the offspring of standard dams. These results highlight the profound influence of a stressful condition, such as the social isolation, on the brain of adolescent rats, and underline intergenerational effects of maternal experiences in regulating the offspring response to stress.

Dataset Information

Interaction does Count: A Cross-Fostering Study on Transgenerational Effects of Pre-reproductive Maternal Enrichment.

Publications

Interaction does Count: A Cross-Fostering Study on Transgenerational Effects of Pre-reproductive Maternal Enrichment.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets