Abstract
Maternal nutritional restriction impacted lipogenic gene expression in adipose tissue of offspring, but the association of this programming with DNA methylation is not yet clear. Therefore, this experiment aimed to investigate the effects of maternal feed intake restriction on offsprings' blood indexes, lipid metabolism of perirenal adipose tissue (PAT) and DNA methylation of lipogenic genes. Blood and PAT were collected from the fetuses (at d 100 of gestation) and kids (at d 90 after birth). Maternal undernutrition (at d 45 to d 100) decreases heart and kidney weight of kid goats after birth. Maternal undernutrition decreased the content of leptin in the umbilical cord blood of fetuses. The expression of uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1) was decreased in fetal PAT of the restriction group, but fatty acid synthetase (FASN) was increased. Protein abundance of UCP1 and FASN was down-regulated in the fetal PAT from the restriction group. Furthermore, only the methylation level of the CpG site (from -756 to -757 bp) in the promoter region of FASN gene was increased for the fetal PAT from the restriction group. These results revealed that maternal feed intake restriction influenced the leptin secretion, changed the expression of FASN and UCP1 gene of fetal PAT. This alteration was able to recover in the kids after removing intake restriction, but the growth performance and visceral organ mass were still impaired, suggesting abnormal fat metabolism may happen in the future.