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Transgenerational transmission and modification of pathological traits induced by prenatal immune activation

Molecular Psychiatry volume 22, pages 102–112 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

Prenatal exposure to infectious or inflammatory insults is increasingly recognized to contribute to the etiology of psychiatric disorders with neurodevelopmental components, including schizophrenia, autism and bipolar disorder. It remains unknown, however, if such immune-mediated brain anomalies can be transmitted to subsequent generations. Using an established mouse model of prenatal immune activation by the viral mimetic poly(I:C), we show that reduced sociability and increased cued fear expression are similarly present in the first- and second-generation offspring of immune-challenged ancestors. We further demonstrate that sensorimotor gating impairments are confined to the direct descendants of infected mothers, whereas increased behavioral despair emerges as a novel phenotype in the second generation. These transgenerational effects are mediated via the paternal lineage and are stable until the third generation, demonstrating transgenerational non-genetic inheritance of pathological traits following in-utero immune activation. Next-generation sequencing further demonstrated unique and overlapping genome-wide transcriptional changes in first- and second-generation offspring of immune-challenged ancestors. These transcriptional effects mirror the transgenerational effects on behavior, showing that prenatal immune activation leads to a transgenerational transmission (presence of similar phenotypes across generations) and modification (presence of distinct phenotypes across generations) of pathological traits. Together, our study demonstrates for, we believe, the first time that prenatal immune activation can negatively affect brain and behavioral functions in multiple generations. These findings thus highlight a novel pathological aspect of this early-life adversity in shaping disease risk across generations.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Weihong Qi and Anna Bratus from the Functional Genomics Center Zurich, Switzerland, for their technical assistance in RNA sequencing. This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grant No. 310030_146217) and by the European Union Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007–2011; Grant Agreement No. 259679) awarded to UM.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Zurich-Vetsuisse, Zurich, Switzerland

    U Weber-Stadlbauer, J Richetto & U Meyer

  2. Physiology and Behavior Laboratory, ETH Zurich, Schwerzenbach, Switzerland

    U Weber-Stadlbauer, M A Labouesse & U Meyer

  3. Laboratory of Neuroepigenetics, University of Zurich and ETH Zürich, Center for Neuroscience Zürich, Brain Research Institute, Zurich, Switzerland

    J Bohacek & I M Mansuy

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  1. U Weber-Stadlbauer
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  2. J Richetto
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Weber-Stadlbauer, U., Richetto, J., Labouesse, M. et al. Transgenerational transmission and modification of pathological traits induced by prenatal immune activation. Mol Psychiatry 22, 102–112 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/mp.2016.41

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