• Marie-Amelie Lukaszewski1,
• Sylvain Mayeur1,
• Isabelle Fajardy1,
• Fabien Delahaye1,
• Isabelle Dutriez-Casteloot1,
• Valerie Montel1,
• Anne Dickes-Coopman1,
• Christine Laborie1,
• Jean Lesage1,
• Didier Vieau1, and
• Christophe Breton1,*
  

+ Author Affiliations

• 1University of Lille
  

• ↵* University of Lille christophe.breton@univ-lille1.fr
  

• Submitted 7 January 2011.
• Revision received 18 May 2011.
• accepted in final form 25 May 2011.
  

Several studies have shown that maternal undernutrition leading to low birth weight predisposes offspring to the development of metabolic pathologies such as obesity. Using a model of prenatal maternal 70% food restriction diet (FR30) in rat, we evaluated whether postweaning high-fat (HF) diet would amplify the phenotype observed under standard diet. We investigated biological parameters as well as gene expression profile focusing on white adipose tissues (WAT) of adult offspring. FR30 procedure does not worsen the metabolic syndrome features induced by HF diet. However, FR30HF rats displayed catch-up growth to match the body weight of adult control HF animals suggesting an increase of adiposity, while showing hyperleptinemia and a blunted increase of corticosterone. Using quantitative RT-PCR array, we demonstrated that FR30HF rats exhibited leptin and Ob-Rb as well as many peptide precursors and receptors gene expression variations in WAT. We also showed that the expression of genes involved in adipogenesis was modified in FR30HF animals in a depot-specific manner. We observed an opposite variation of STAT-3 phosphorylation levels suggesting that leptin sensitivity is modified in WAT adult FR30 offspring. We demonstrated that 11β-HSD1, 11β-HSD2, GR and MR genes are co-expressed in WAT and that FR30 procedure modifies gene expression levels, especially under HF diet. In particular, level variation of 11β-HSD2, whose protein expression was detected by Western blotting, may represent a novel mechanism that may affect WAT glucocorticoid sensitivity. Data suggest that maternal undernutrition differently programs the adult offspring WAT gene expression profile that may predispose for altered fat deposition.