Reproduction Abstracts

Introduction: The developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD) concept proposes that maternal environment during pregnancy may influence offspring health and predispose to chronic disease risk in later life. Our previous mouse in vivo studies showed that maternal low protein diet (LPD) and advanced maternal age (AMA) programme the preimplantation embryo to adult disease, notably cardiometabolic dysfunction. To test this hypothesis and understand the mechanistic...

The effect of occupation and environment on semen quality is of obvious interest to doctors and their patients. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) suggest that men should be advised about the possible negative effects of: i) some occupations; ii) cigarette smoking; iii) alcohol consumption; iv) tight underwear; v) recreational drugs; and vi) high BMI. However, the evidence that underpins these suggestions is often quite weak, relying on small underpow...

Introduction: Following IVF, blastocysts produced from oocytes recovered from gilts fed a high fibre diet for the preceding 19 days contained more cells than blastocysts from oocytes of control-fed gilts. Oocytes were collected on day 19 of the gilts’ third oestrous cycle and matured in 10% of their own follicular fluid (FF), suggesting that FF may confer the reproductive benefits. The current study compared the protein composition of pooled FF from six high fibre-fed pig...

In a previous study, following IVF, oocytes from gilts fed a high fibre diet for the first 19 days of their third oestrous cycle, produced blastocysts with more cells than oocytes from control-fed gilts. We hypothesise that FF protein composition is altered by the diet and that this confers the reproductive benefits.The current study compared the protein composition of pooled Day 19 FF from 12 high fibre-fed pigs and 12 control-fed pigs in search of biom...

Introduction: The pre-implantation embryo has two distinct cell lineages at the blastocyst stage. An outer epithelial monolayer called trophectoderm and the non-polar inner cell mass. Tight junctions (TJ) form continuous intercellular contacts between neighbouring trophectoderm cells and are crucial in establishing a blastocoele cavity. TJs are composed of several transmembrane proteins including Claudins, a large family of proteins that play a central role in the formation of...

Introduction: Maternal low protein diet exclusively during preimplantation mouse development (Emb-LPD) induces compensatory changes in extra-embryonic lineages including primitive endoderm (PE) to enhance nutrient delivery during later gestation, for example, stimulation of endocytosis. Whilst such responses protect fetal growth, adult offspring exhibit increased cardiometabolic disease risk. Here, we investigate epigenetic mechanisms underlying maternal dietary programming, u...

The embryonic environment can induce permanent changes in metabolism and increase disease risk in adults. Rodent models show that modifications in maternal diet exclusively during pre-implantation development can induce metabolic disease in adults. Changes must therefore occur within the early embryo and be maintained throughout development. Determining adaptive mechanisms is challenging due to the size of the early embryo. We generated ES cells from inbred C57BL/6 mice as a m...