Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 104, Issue 31, Pages 12796-12800Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0705667104
Keywords
developmental plasticity; epigenetics; gene expression; leptin; obesity
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Developmental plasticity in response to environmental cues can take the form of polyphenism, as for the discrete morphs of some insects, or of an apparently continuous spectrum of phenotype, as for most mammalian traits. The metabolic phenotype of adult rats, including the propensity to obesity, hyperinsulinemia, and hyperphagia, shows plasticity in response to prenatal nutrition and to neonatal administration of the adipokine leptin. Here, we report that the effects of neonatal leptin on hepatic gene expression and epigenetic status in adulthood are directionally dependent on the animal's nutritional status in utero. These results demonstrate that, during mammalian development, the direction of the response to one cue can be determined by previous exposure to another, suggesting the potential for a discontinuous distribution of environmentally induced phenotypes, analogous to the phenomenon of polyphenism.
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