Obesity is a growing societal scourge. Recent studies have uncovered that paternal excessive weight induced by an unbalanced diet affects the metabolic health of offspring. These reports mainly employed single-generation male exposure. However, consequences multigenerational feeding on progeny remain largely unknown. Here, we show maintaining Western for five consecutive generations in mice ind...

BACKGROUND Epigenetic regulation by diverse classes of small RNAs is mediated by the highly conserved Argonaute/Piwi family of proteins. Although Argonautes are broadly expressed, the Piwi subfamily primarily functions in the germ line. Piwi proteins are associated with germline-specific ribonucleoprotein (RNP) granules in Drosophila, zebrafish, and mouse. Depending on the species and on the sp...

Increasing studies have shown that mature spermatozoa contain many transcripts including mRNAs and miRNAs. However, the expression profile of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in mammalian sperm has not been systematically investigated. Here, we used highly purified RNA to investigate lncRNA expression profiles in mouse mature sperm by stranded-specific RNA-seq. We identified 20,907 known and 4,08...

During each life cycle, gametes must preserve and pass on both genetic and epigenetic information, making the germline both immortal and totipotent. In the male germline the dramatic morphological transformation of a germ cell through meiosis, into a sperm competent for fertilization, while retaining this information is an incredible example of cellular differentiation. This process of spermato...

The mutagenic activity of transposable elements (TEs) is suppressed by epigenetic silencing and small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), especially in gametes that could transmit transposed elements to the next generation. In pollen from the model plant Arabidopsis, we show that TEs are unexpectedly reactivated and transpose, but only in the pollen vegetative nucleus, which accompanies the sperm cells ...

Dicer1 is an endoribonuclease involved in the biogenesis of functional molecules such as microRNAs (miRNAs) and endogenous small interfering RNAs (endo-siRNAs). These small non-coding RNAs are important regulators of post-transcriptional gene expression and participate in the control of male fertility. With the knowledge that 1) Dicer1-dependent factors are required for proper sperm maturation ...

Exposure to the agricultural fungicide vinclozolin during gestation promotes a higher incidence of various diseases in the subsequent unexposed F3 and F4 generations. This phenomenon is termed epigenetic transgenerational inheritance and has been shown to in part involve alterations in DNA methylation, but the role of other epigenetic mechanisms remains unknown. The current study investigated t...