An ancestral western diet causes transgenerational changes in offspring feeding behavior with associated alterations in brain mitochondrial proteome and microRNAs.

Abstract

Abstract Clustering of obesity in families suggests that cultural inheritance, genetics, and epigenetics work together to affect children's eating habits. Emerging evidence in various species including Drosophila indicates that inter/transgenerational inheritance may play a significant role in programming offspring metabolism and behavior. In the current study, taking advantage of Drosophila physiological simplicity and genetic pliability we explored whether environmental factors, such as ancestral diet, can cause metabolic disturbances and alterations in offspring feeding behavior. Here, we demonstrate that ancestral Western diet increases offspring food consumption with concomitant changes in locomotor activity, triglyceride levels, and mitochondrial density in the brain. Mechanistically, the generational differences were associated with changes in brain proteome and miRNAs. RNAi-based knockdown approach implicated miR-10-3p as a potential factor in transmitting epigenetic information across generations. Together, this study suggests that ancestral nutrition may contribute to the programming of offspring feeding behavior through alterations in miRNAs.