Abstract
The global consumption of highly processed, calorie-dense foods has contributed to an epidemic of overweight and obesity, along with negative consequences for metabolic dysfunction and disease susceptibility. As it becomes apparent that overweight and obesity have ripple effects through generations, understanding of the processes involved is required, in both maternal and paternal epigenetic inheritance. We focused on the patrilineal effects of a Western-style high-fat (21%) and high-sugar (34%) diet (WD) compared to control diet (CD) during adolescence and investigated F0 and F1 mice for physiological and behavioral changes. F0 males (fathers) showed increased body weight, impaired glycemic control, and decreased attractiveness to females. Paternal WD caused significant phenotypic changes in F1 offspring, including higher body weights of pups, increased Actinobacteria abundance in the gut microbiota (ascertained using 16S microbiome profiling), a food preference for WD pellets, increased male dominance and attractiveness to females, as well as decreased behavioral despair. These results collectively demonstrate the long-term intergenerational effects of a Western-style diet during paternal adolescence. The behavioral and physiological alterations in F1 offspring provide evidence of adaptive paternal programming via epigenetic inheritance. These findings have important implications for understanding paternally mediated intergenerational inheritance, and its relevance to offspring health and disease susceptibility.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Footnotes
↵# Joint senior authors
Nonstandard abbreviations
- CD
- Control diet (7% fat, 10% sugar)
- DOHaD
- Developmental Origins of Health and Disease
- F0
- Parental generation
- F1
- Filial generation
- FFT
- Fast Fourier transformation
- GTT
- Glucose tolerance test
- H&E
- Hematoxylin and eosin
- MUPs
- Major urinary proteins
- NOR
- Novel object recognition
- NSF
- Novelty-suppressed feeding
- PatCD
- Paternal CD, i.e., the father was fed the control diet preconception
- PatWD
- Paternal WD, i.e., the father was fed the Western diet preconception
- PND
- Postnatal day
- USV
- Ultrasonic vocalization
- WD
- Western-style high-fat (21%) and high-sugar (34%) diet