Project description:DNA methylation profiles from saliva collected from 89 mothers and 179 adolescent children who received or did not receive perinatal folic acid supplementation Periconceptional folic acid supplementation and DNA methylation patterns in adolescents
Project description:Folic acid is one of the B vitamins and is involved into neural function and brain development. Increasing evidence showed that folic acid can regulate neural gene function through DNA modification, while regulatory roles of folic acid in RNA modification remain largely unknown. In this study, we investigated the role of folic acid in regulating neural mRNA m6A epitranscriptome in Drosophila and mammals. We found that the folate treatment induced a significant increase in mRNA m6A levels compared to the control group in Drosophila and S2 cells. MeRIP-seq analysis indicated that carbon metabolism pathway and neural-related pathways were mainly affected. Subsequently, we migrated our validation experiments to human cells, our results showed that folate also affected mRNA m6A modification through one-carbon metabolic pathway in human cells, especially in neuronal cells. We also validated the effect of folic acid on mRNA methylation in mice, the results showed that folic acid treatment can significantly increase the expression of m6A-related proteins (Mettl3, Mettl14, FTO) and neural mRNA m6A methylation levels in mice brain. Moreover, we found that folic-acid producing Lactobacillus plantarum can significantly affects the m6A modification of mRNA in the host. In conclusion, we demonstrated that folic acid can participate in mRNA m6A modification through one-carbon metabolic pathway in Drosophila and mammals, and found that it has a significant effect on neural-related genes and pathways.
Project description:Folic acid is involved in DNA methylation, thereby it can potentially induce gene silencing. We used microarrays to detect the transcripts that are showing different expressions after short-term folic acid (FA) treatment.
Project description:We report that fortified levels of folic acid adversely affect cilia strucure and function. This data set agrees with previous experiements which have demonstrated that elevated folic acid levels can increase transcription variability on a genome-wide level. Furthermore, we demonstrate that among these dysregulated genes, genes contained within SYSgold cilia database are proportionally over-represented. This over-representation of cilia genes among dysregulated genes may play a key role in ciliopathys' sensitivity to elevated folic acid levels.
Project description:Folic acid supplementation (8 mg/kg diet) promotes colon tumor formation in mice with established colitis induced by carcinogen azoxymethane (AOM) and dextran sulfate sodium sulfate (DSS). This induction of colon tumors was associated with hypomethylation of DNA cased by folic acid supplementation.
Project description:Folic acid is present in pre-natal vitamins, fortified cereal grains and multi-vitamin supplements. High intake of folic acid through these sources has resulted in populations with increased levels of serum folate and unmetabolized folic acid. Although the benefits of folic acid in the prevention of neural tube defects are undeniable, the impact of long-term consumption of folic acid on the prostate is not fully understood. In this study, we used a rodent model to test whether dietary folic acid (FA) supplementation changes prostate homeostasis and response to androgen deprivation. Although intact prostate weights do not differ between diet groups, we made the surprising observation that dietary folic acid supplementation confers partial resistance to castration-mediated prostate involution. More specifically, male mice that were fed a folic acid supplemented diet and then castrated had greater prostate wet weights, greater prostatic luminal epithelial cell heights, and more abundant RNAs encoding prostate secretory proteins compared to mice that were fed a control diet and castrated. We used RNA-seq to identify signaling pathways enriched in the castrated prostates from folic acid supplemented diet fed mice compared to control mice. We observed differential expression of genes involved in several metabolic pathways in the FA supplemented mice. Together, our results show that dietary FA supplementation can impact metabolism in the prostate and attenuate the prostate’s response to androgen deprivation. This has important implications for androgen deprivation therapies used in the treatment of prostate disease, as consumption of high levels of folic acid could reduce the efficacy of these treatments.
Project description:Studies have indicated that altered maternal micronutrients and vitamins influence the development and susceptibility of newborns to chronic diseases. Among these, folic acid (FA) plays a key role in the synthesis and repair of DNA, along with maintenance of epigenetic DNA methylation. Deficiency of FA has been associated with the pathogenesis of neural tube defects. Since FA can modulate DNA methylation and affect gene expression, we investigated the effect of gestational FA supplementation on the expression of genes in the offspring brain. Our results suggest that a maternal ten-fold increase in FA supplementation alters the expression and dysregulates a number of genes in the offspring brain, including many involved in development. While a number of genes that were dysregulated were common to both male and female pups, there were sex differences in gene expression changes.