TY  - JOUR
A1  - Mattern, Felix
A1  - Post, Antonia
A1  - Solger, Franziska
A1  - O'Leary, Aet
A1  - Slattery, David A.
A1  - Reif, Andreas
A1  - Haaf, Thomas
T1  - Prenatal and postnatal experiences associated with epigenetic changes in the adult mouse brain
T2  - Behavioural brain research
N2  - To analyze the influences of early-life history on the brain epigenome, the offspring of mouse dams kept in an enriched or standard environment were exposed postnatally to enriched, standard, or adverse conditions. The methylation patterns of 7 candidate genes (9 loci) involved in developmental programming of stress vulnerability/resilience and psychiatric disease were analyzed in 6 brain regions of adult male and female mice. Exposure to an enriched prenatal environment was associated with widespread epigenetic changes (all of small effect size), affecting 29 of 324 (9%) gene/region-specific methylation patterns. The effects of either adverse or enriched postnatal conditions were tested separately in the two prenatal cohorts. Significant changes were observed in 2 of 324 (0.6%) loci in offspring of dams in a standard environment and 6 of 324 (1.9%) loci in animals that were exposed prenatally to an enriched environment. Prenatal life experiences appear to have a bigger effect on the adult brain epigenome than postnatal experiences. Positive prenatal life experiences may increase epigenetic plasticity of the brain later in life. All observed between-group differences were sex-specific, consistent with largely different developmental trajectories of the male and female brain. Multiple changes of small effect size are consistent with a multifactorial model of developmental programming of adult behavior and disease susceptibility.
KW  - Brain DNA methylation
KW  - Developmental programming
KW  - Early (prenatal and postnatal) life experiences
KW  - Environmental enrichment
KW  - Maternal separation
KW  - Stress vulnerability/resilience genes
Y1  - 2018
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/77523
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-775238
SN  - 0166-4328
VL  - 359.2019
SP  - 143
EP  - 148
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  -