Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Nov 9;21(1):769.
doi: 10.1186/s12864-020-07169-7.

DNA methylation in infants with low and high body fatness

Pontus Henriksson  1 , Antonio Lentini  2 , Signe Altmäe  3   4 , David Brodin  5 , Patrick Müller  5 , Elisabet Forsum  6 , Colm E Nestor  2 , Marie Löf  7   5
Affiliations

DNA methylation in infants with low and high body fatness

Pontus Henriksson et al. BMC Genomics. .

Abstract

Background: Birth weight is determined by the interplay between infant genetics and the intrauterine environment and is associated with several health outcomes in later life. Many studies have reported an association between birth weight and DNA methylation in infants and suggest that altered epigenetics may underlie birthweight-associated health outcomes. However, birth weight is a relatively nonspecific measure of fetal growth and consists of fat mass and fat-free mass which may have different effects on health outcomes which motivates studies of infant body composition and DNA methylation. Here, we combined genome-wide DNA methylation profiling of buccal cells from 47 full-term one-week old infants with accurate measurements of infant fat mass and fat-free mass using air-displacement plethysmography.

Results: No significant association was found between DNA methylation in infant buccal cells and infant body composition. Moreover, no association between infant DNA methylation and parental body composition or indicators of maternal glucose metabolism were found.

Conclusions: Despite accurate measures of body composition, we did not identify any associations between infant body fatness and DNA methylation. These results are consistent with recent studies that generally have identified only weak associations between DNA methylation and birthweight. Although our results should be confirmed by additional larger studies, our findings may suggest that differences in DNA methylation between individuals with low and high body fatness may be established later in childhood.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
The DNA methylation profile of buccal cells fails to separate newborns with high or low body fatness. (a) Outline of experimental design: Buccal cells were isolated from those newborns with the highest (N = 23) and lowest (N = 24) body fatness enrolled the PATHOS (PArents and THeir OffSpring) study. Genomic DNA was isolated from buccal cells, bisulfite-treated and applied to Illumina® Infinium 450 k DNA methylation arrays. (b) Principle components analysis failed to cluster methylation data by fatness (c) Unsupervised hierarchical clustering of the same data also failed to separate subjects by body fatness, sex, fat mass index (FMI) or array. (d) Manhattan plot showing of association of genome-wide DNA methylation levels with infant body fatness. No probes were significantly associated with body fatness after adjusting for multiple correction (FDRADJUSTED = 0.05)
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
No association between maternal phenotype and infant DNA methylation. (a-c) Manhattan plots showing lack of association (FDRADJUSTED = 0.05) between DNA methylation levels and (a) maternal body mass index, (b) maternal fat mass index and (c) maternal fat-free mass index
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Ding X, Zheng D, Fan C, Liu Z, Dong H, Lu Y, Qi K. Genome-wide screen of DNA methylation identifies novel markers in childhood obesity. Gene. 2015;566(1):74–83. doi: 10.1016/j.gene.2015.04.032. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Nevalainen T, Kananen L, Marttila S, Jylhava J, Mononen N, Kahonen M, Raitakari OT, Hervonen A, Jylha M, Lehtimaki T, et al. Obesity accelerates epigenetic aging in middle-aged but not in elderly individuals. Clin Epigenetics. 2017;9:20. doi: 10.1186/s13148-016-0301-7. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Soubry A, Schildkraut JM, Murtha A, Wang F, Huang Z, Bernal A, Kurtzberg J, Jirtle RL, Murphy SK, Hoyo C. Paternal obesity is associated with IGF2 hypomethylation in newborns: results from a newborn epigenetics study (NEST) cohort. BMC Med. 2013;11:29. doi: 10.1186/1741-7015-11-29. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. van Dijk SJ, Molloy PL, Varinli H, Morrison JL, Muhlhausler BS, Members of Epi S Epigenetics and human obesity. Int J Obes. 2015;39(1):85–97. doi: 10.1038/ijo.2014.34. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Xu X, Su S, Barnes VA, De Miguel C, Pollock J, Ownby D, Shi H, Zhu H, Snieder H, Wang X. A genome-wide methylation study on obesity: differential variability and differential methylation. Epigenetics. 2013;8(5):522–533. doi: 10.4161/epi.24506. - DOI - PMC - PubMed