Gene expression profiling of white adipose tissue reveals paternal transmission of proneness to obesity

Previously, we found that C57BL/6J (B6) mice are more prone to develop obesity than PWK mice. In addition, we analyzed reciprocal crosses between these mice and found that (PWK × B6) F1 mice, which have B6 fathers, are more likely to develop dietary obesity than (B6 × PWK) F1 mice, which have B6 mothers. These results suggested that diet-induced obesity is paternally transmitted. In this study, we performed transcriptome analysis of adipose tissues of B6, PWK, (PWK × B6) F1, and (B6 × PWK) F1 mice using next-generation sequencing. We found that paternal transmission of diet-induced obesity was correlated with genes involved in adipose tissue inflammation, metal ion transport, and cilia. Furthermore, we analyzed the imprinted genes expressed in white adipose tissue (WAT) and obesity. Expression of paternally expressed imprinted genes (PEGs) was negatively correlated with body weight, whereas expression of maternally expressed imprinted genes (MEGs) was positively correlated. In the obesity-prone B6 mice, expression of PEGs was down-regulated by a high-fat diet, suggesting that abnormally low expression of PEGs contributes to high-fat diet-induced obesity in B6 mice. In addition, using single-nucleotide polymorphisms that differ between B6 and PWK, we identified candidate imprinted genes in WAT.