PUBLICATION
Paternal hypoxia exposure primes offspring for increased hypoxia resistance
- Authors
- Ragsdale, A., Ortega-Recalde, O., Dutoit, L., Besson, A.A., Chia, J.H.Z., King, T., Nakagawa, S., Hickey, A., Gemmell, N.J., Hore, T., Johnson, S.L.
- ID
- ZDB-PUB-220831-15
- Date
- 2022
- Source
- BMC Biology 20: 185 (Journal)
- Registered Authors
- Keywords
- Cross-generational, DNA methylation, Danio rerio, Epigenetic, Intergenerational, Transcriptomics, Transgenerational acclimation, Transgenerational plasticity, Zebrafish
- Datasets
- GEO:GSE160662
- MeSH Terms
-
- Acclimatization
- Animals
- Epigenesis, Genetic
- Humans
- Hypoxia/genetics
- Male
- Paternal Exposure*
- Zebrafish*/genetics
- PubMed
- 36038899 Full text @ BMC Biol.
Citation
Ragsdale, A., Ortega-Recalde, O., Dutoit, L., Besson, A.A., Chia, J.H.Z., King, T., Nakagawa, S., Hickey, A., Gemmell, N.J., Hore, T., Johnson, S.L. (2022) Paternal hypoxia exposure primes offspring for increased hypoxia resistance. BMC Biology. 20:185.
Abstract
Background In a time of rapid environmental change, understanding how the challenges experienced by one generation can influence the fitness of future generations is critically needed. Using tolerance assays and transcriptomic and methylome approaches, we use zebrafish as a model to investigate cross-generational acclimation to hypoxia.
Results We show that short-term paternal exposure to hypoxia endows offspring with greater tolerance to acute hypoxia. We detected two hemoglobin genes that are significantly upregulated by more than 6-fold in the offspring of hypoxia exposed males. Moreover, the offspring which maintained equilibrium the longest showed greatest upregulation in hemoglobin expression. We did not detect differential methylation at any of the differentially expressed genes, suggesting that other epigenetic mechanisms are responsible for alterations in gene expression.
Conclusions Overall, our findings suggest that an epigenetic 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.
Genes / Markers
Expression
Phenotype
Mutations / Transgenics
Human Disease / Model
Sequence Targeting Reagents
Fish
Orthology
Engineered Foreign Genes
Mapping