Advancing Metabolism Research to Overcome Low Litter Survival in Metabolically Stressed Mice.

Advancing Metabolism Research to Overcome Low Litter Survival in Metabolically Stressed Mice. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab. 2019 May 14;: Authors: Powell CA, Choudhury M Abstract Elucidating the mechanism underlying the transmission of metabolic disease to subsequent generations requires robust pre-clinical mouse breeding strategies. Western diets rich in fat and carbohydrates are contributing factors in the rise of diabetes and obesity rates worldwide. Therefore, determining the impact of Western diets consumed by parents on offspring and future generations is critical for understanding the perpetuation of these diseases. Specifically, epigenetic regulation and transgenerational inheritance of metabolic disease is an emerging field of study requiring robust murine models. However, a major challenge to transgenerational studies is offspring mortality, exacerbated by maternal stress during pregnancy. Here we describe a challenge experienced in our metabolic research in Western diet-fed female mice leading to the loss of litters via pup mortality and cannibalism by the mother. Further, our study evaluates various breeding schemes with pregnancy efficiency and refined husbandry techniques to overcome pup mortality, infanticide, charecterize dams' and pups' metabolic characteristics, and to determine the impact on physiology of dams under detailed breeding schemes. PMID: 31084500 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Am J Physiol Endocri... - Category: Endocrinology Authors: Tags: Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab Source Type: research