Dataset Information

Increased paternal corticosterone exposure influences offspring behaviour and expression of urinary pheromones.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Studies have shown that paternal stress prior to conception can influence the innate behaviours of their offspring. The evolutionary impacts of such intergenerational effects are therefore of considerable interest. Our group previously showed in a model of daily stress that glucocorticoid treatment of adult male mouse breeders prior to conception leads to increased anxiety-related behaviours in male offspring. Here, we aimed to understand the transgenerational effects of paternal stress exposure on the social behaviour of progeny and its potential influence on reproductive success.

Results

We assessed social parameters including social reward, male attractiveness and social dominance, in the offspring (F1) and grand-offspring (F2). We report that paternal corticosterone treatment was associated with increased display of subordination towards other male mice. Those mice were unexpectedly more attractive to female mice while expressing reduced levels of the key rodent pheromone Darcin, contrary to its conventional role in driving female attraction. We investigated the epigenetic regulation of major urinary protein (Mup) expression by performing the first Oxford Nanopore direct methylation of sperm DNA in a mouse model of stress, but found no differences in Mup genes that could be attributed to corticosterone-treatment. Furthermore, no overt differences of the prefrontal cortex transcriptome were found in F1 offspring, implying that peripheral mechanisms are likely contributing to the phenotypic differences. Interestingly, no phenotypic differences were observed in the F2 grand-offspring.

Conclusions

Overall, our findings highlight the potential of moderate paternal stress to affect intergenerational (mal)adaptive responses, informing future studies of adaptiveness in rodents, humans and other species.

SUBMITTER: Hoffmann LB

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10478242 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Increased paternal corticosterone exposure influences offspring behaviour and expression of urinary pheromones.

Hoffmann Lucas B LB McVicar Evangeline A EA Harris Rebekah V RV Collar-Fernández Coralina C Clark Michael B MB Hannan Anthony J AJ Pang Terence Y TY

BMC biology 20230905 1

<h4>Background</h4>Studies have shown that paternal stress prior to conception can influence the innate behaviours of their offspring. The evolutionary impacts of such intergenerational effects are therefore of considerable interest. Our group previously showed in a model of daily stress that glucocorticoid treatment of adult male mouse breeders prior to conception leads to increased anxiety-related behaviours in male offspring. Here, we aimed to understand the transgenerational effects of pater ...[more]

PMID: 37667240

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Project description:Environmental challenges experienced by an organism can have multiple effects at an individual level, with recent work also suggesting these challenges may affect their unexposed offspring. In a time of rapid environmental change, understanding whether environmental challenges experienced by organisms could increase the fitness of future generations to survive these same stressors, is critically needed. Low dissolved oxygen is a common environmental challenge that aquatic organisms encounter, resulting in numerous physiological, phenotypic, and epigenetic changes. In this study, we use zebrafish (Danio rerio) as a model to investigate how paternal hypoxia experience impacts subsequent progeny. Males were exposed to moderate hypoxia (11-13 kPA) for 2 weeks, bred to create an F1 generation, and progeny underwent an acute hypoxia (0-1 kPA) tolerance assay. Using time to loss of equilibrium and loss of equilibrium frequency as measured of hypoxia resistance, we show that paternal exposure to hypoxia endow offspring with a greater tolerance to acute hypoxia, compared to offspring of unexposed males, though there are strong family x treatment effects. In addition to phenotypic alternations, we also investigated changes in gene expression in offspring. We conducted RNA-Seq on whole fry and detected 91 differentially expressed genes, including two hemoglobin genes that are significantly upregulated by more than 4-fold in the offspring of hypoxia exposed males. Moreover, the offspring which maintained equilibrium the longest showed the greatest upregulation in hemoglobin expression. Paternal exposures to physiological challenges are thus able to impact the phenotype and gene expression of their unexposed progeny. We conducted whole genome bisulfite sequencing (WGBS) on the sperm of parental males to assess whether changes in progeny phenotype and gene expression are underpinned by changes in DNA methylation. While we observed coupling of methylation levels in the parental sperm and gene expression in progeny overall, we did not detect differential methylation at any of the differentially expressed genes, suggesting that another epigenetic mechanism is responsible for the observed changes in gene expression. Overall, our findings suggest that a ‘memory’ of past hypoxia exposure is maintained and that this environmentally induced information is transferred to subsequent generations, pre-acclimating progeny to cope with hypoxic conditions.

Dataset Information

Increased paternal corticosterone exposure influences offspring behaviour and expression of urinary pheromones.

Background

Results

Conclusions

Publications

Increased paternal corticosterone exposure influences offspring behaviour and expression of urinary pheromones.

Similar Datasets

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