Maternal nutrition during pregnancy usually affects the foetal epigenome and phenotype for mammals. Imprinting genes have functions in regulating foetal growth.

Notably, maternal undernutrition is a common phenomenon for grazing pregnant goats, especially in winter or dry seasons. When this situation prevails, goats probably mobilize nutrients stored in the body to maintain the requirements of foetal growth and development.

Researchers from the Institute of Subtropical Agriculture (ISA) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with researchers in Hunan Institute of Animal and Veterinary Science, investigated the effects of effects of maternal feed intake restriction during pregnancy on the expression of growth regulation, imprinting and epigenetic transcription-related genes in foetal goats.

In the study, the feed of the restriction group (RG) was 40% less than that of the control group (CG). The early and late gestation goats were weighed, bled and slaughtered on days 65 and 135 of gestation, respectively.

The researchers found that in early and late gestation, the foetal weight, body length, the weight of foetal heart and liver were altered by maternal feed intake restriction. In addition, expression of the methyl-CpG-binding protein 2(MECP2), methyl-CpG-binding domain protein 2 (MBD2), methyl-CpG-binding domain protein 3 (MBD3), and ten-eleven-translocation 1 (TET1) genes in the foetal liver or the foetal heart were affected by feed restriction during early or late gestation.

"These results indicate feed intake restriction during gestation influenced foetal development and regulated the relative abundance of mRNA for epigenetic transcription-related genes,” said Li Xiaopeng, a doctoral researcher at ISA.

This research was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 31402105, 31402112), Hunan Provincial Science and Technology Project (Grant No.2016NK2171) and Youth Innovation Team Project of ISA, CAS (2017QNCXTD_ZCS).

The study entitled “Effects of maternal feed intake restriction during pregnancy on the expression of growth regulation, imprinting and epigenetictranscription-related genes in foetal goats” has been published online in Animal Reproduction Science. This article is available for download at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anireprosci.2018.09.005

Contract: YAN Qiongxian and YI kangle
E-mail addresses: yanqx14@isa.ac.cn (Q. Yan), yikangle@yeah.net (K. Yi).