Maternal enzyme reprograms paternal DNA for healthy offspring

Kawamura, Yumiko K.; Peters, Antoine H. F. M.

doi:10.1038/d41586-022-01237-6

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18 May 2022

Maternal enzyme reprograms paternal DNA for healthy offspring

It emerges that high blood sugar deregulates the enzyme TET3 in the eggs of female mice, preventing it from properly modifying sperm-derived DNA when eggs are fertilized. This leads to metabolic defects in adult progeny.

Yumiko K. Kawamura
1. Yumiko K. Kawamura is at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, 4058 Basel, Switzerland.
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Antoine H. F. M. Peters
1. Antoine H. F. M. Peters is at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, 4058 Basel, Switzerland, and in the Faculty of Sciences, University of Basel.
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Eating too much or too little before conception or during pregnancy can make it more likely that a person’s children will gain excessive weight or develop type 2 diabetes in adulthood¹. The mechanisms that confer this ‘memory’ of diet-induced metabolic disease have mostly remained elusive². Writing in Nature, Chen et al.³ reveal a mechanism through which high blood sugar — a sign of some metabolic disorders — is transmitted from female mice to their offspring through their eggs.

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Nature 605, 621-622 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01237-6

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