Journal
PLOS ONE
Volume 8, Issue 12, Pages -Publisher
PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0084594
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- National Health and Medical Research Council [631928]
- South Australian Cardiovascular Research Network Fellowship [CR10A4988]
- British Heart Foundation [FS/09/029/27902] Funding Source: researchfish
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Exposure to maternal obesity before and/or throughout pregnancy may increase the risk of obesity and insulin resistance in the offspring in childhood and adult life, therefore, resulting in its transmission into subsequent generations. We have previously shown that exposure to maternal obesity around the time of conception alone resulted in increased adiposity in female lambs. Changes in the abundance of insulin signalling molecules in skeletal muscle and adipose tissue precede the development of insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. It is not clear, however, whether exposure to maternal obesity results in insulin resistance in her offspring as a consequence of the impact of increased adiposity on skeletal muscle or as a consequence of the programming of specific changes in the abundance of insulin signalling molecules in this tissue. We have used an embryo transfer model in the sheep to investigate the effects of exposure to either maternal obesity or to weight loss in normal and obese mothers preceding and for one week after conception on the expression and abundance of insulin signalling molecules in muscle in the offspring. We found that exposure to maternal obesity resulted in lower muscle GLUT-4 and Ser 9 phospho-GSK3 alpha and higher muscle GSK3 alpha abundance in lambs when compared to lambs conceived in normally nourished ewes. Exposure to maternal weight loss in normal or obese mothers, however, resulted in lower muscle IRS1, PI3K, p110 beta, aPKC zeta, Thr 642 phospho-AS160 and GLUT-4 abundance in the offspring. In conclusion, maternal obesity or weight loss around conception have each programmed specific changes on subsets of molecules in the insulin signalling, glucose transport and glycogen synthesis pathways in offspring. There is a need for a stronger evidence base to ensure that weight loss regimes in obese women seeking to become pregnant minimize the metabolic costs for the next generation.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available