The etiology and pathogenesis of the pregnancy syndrome preeclampsia remain poorly understood. There is substantial evidence to suggest that the diverse manifestations of preeclampsia, including altered vascular reactivity, vasospasm, and discrete pathology in many organ systems, are derived from pathologic changes within the maternal vascular endothelium. With the theme of endothelial cell dys...

■ Abstract Naturally occurring variations in maternal care alter the expression of genes that regulate behavioral and endocrine responses to stress, as well as hippocampal synaptic development. These effects form the basis for the development of stable, individual differences in stress reactivity and certain forms of cognition. Maternal care also influences the maternal behavior of female offsp...

Maternal stress is commonly cited as an important risk factor for spontaneous abortion. For humans, however, there is little physiological evidence linking miscarriage to stress. This lack of evidence may be attributable to a paucity of research on maternal stress during the earliest gestational stages. Most human studies have focused on "clinical" pregnancy (>6 weeks after the last menstrual p...

Maternal stress is associated with an altered mother-infant relationship that endangers offspring development, leading to emotional/behavioral problems. However, little research has investigated the stress-induced alterations of the maternal brain that could underlie such a disruption of mother-infant bonding. Olfactory cues play an extensive role in the coordination of mother-infant interactio...

Development of spatial memory in the rat is influenced by both maternal and nonmaternal aspects of the postnatal environment. Yet it remains poorly understood how these two aspects of the postnatal environment interact to program offspring cognitive development. By considering the joint influence of neonatal environmental novelty and maternal self-stress regulation on the development of spatial...

In the rat, variations in maternal care appear to influence the development of behavioral and endocrine responses to stress in the offspring. The results of cross-fostering studies reported here provide evidence for (i) a causal relationship between maternal behavior and stress reactivity in the offspring and (ii) the transmission of such individual differences in maternal behavior from one gen...

BACKGROUND In the past decade, a body of animal and human research has revealed a profound influence of early-life experiences, ranging from variations in parenting behaviour to severe adversity, on hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis regulation in adulthood. In our own previous studies, we have shown how variations in early-life parental care influence the development of the hippocampus and mo...

Zhengdan958 and Anyu5 are two elite maize hybrids of China, which manifest similar paternal lines (Chang7-2) but different maternal lines (Zheng58 and Ye478). Zhengdan958 has a 10-15% yield advantage over Anyu5. In this study, we applied digital gene expression technology to analyze transcriptomes of mature embryos from the two hybrids and their parents, aimed to investigate molecular mechanism...

AIMS Telomeres undergo shortening with cell division, accelerated by increased oxidative stress. We aimed to demonstrate shortened telomeres in the offspring of mothers who have diabetes as a consequence of exposure to increased oxidative stress during intrauterine development. METHODS We examined the level of glycaemia (glucose, HbA1c, fructosamine), oxidative stress (lipid peroxidation) and...

Early embryonic exposure to maternal glucocorticoids can broadly impact physiology and behaviour across phylogenetically diverse taxa. The transfer of maternal glucocorticoids to offspring may be an inevitable cost associated with poor environmental conditions, or serve as a maternal effect that alters offspring phenotype in preparation for a stressful environment. Regardless, maternal glucocor...