The father’s diet influences the health of his offspring. A study in mice showed changes in sperm RNA.
Healthy living matters at the time of conception, but it is not the only one that is important. Good parenting habits also shape the health of the unborn baby. Two studies, carried out on mice, deliver similar conclusions in the prestigious journal Science.
The first publication looked at the impact of a high fat diet on sperm quality. For this, two groups of mice were recruited. One followed a normal diet. The other consumed more fat than usual. As expected, the specimens in this group gained weight, exhibited glucose intolerance and insulin resistance. The researchers then fertilized mouse eggs from the sperm of the animals.
Poor glucose tolerance
The mice resulting from this experiment did not show any difference in weight at 16 weeks. But as early as 7 weeks, those born to fathers fed a lot of lipids developed poorer glucose tolerance and insulin resistance. These two factors worsened at 15 weeks.
But what is the role of the father in these inequalities? In order to determine this, RNA from the paternal sperm was taken, purified and injected into normal zygotes – that is, cells resulting from the fusion of two gametes. Again, the researchers observed higher blood sugar and insulin levels when RNA came from fat-fed male mice.
Effects on mature semen
This suggests that ribonucleic acid contains information that induces glucose intolerance, but not insulin resistance. In mice, this results in a lower expression of genes involved in the biochemical transformation of carbohydrates, monosaccharides and ketones (organic compound of the family of carbonyl compounds).
The second publication comes to the same conclusions with a different diet: this time the team put a group of mice on a low-protein diet and observed the impact. If the effect does not occur on the immature sperm collected in the testes, it is present in the RNA of the mature sperm of the epididymis. Here, the researchers found fragments capable of suppressing several genes, including one that contributes to the plasticity of embryonic stem cells in mice. All these alterations can therefore promote the occurrence of metabolic disorders in young mice.
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