OBJECTIVE To discuss the recent literature on paternal obesity, focusing on the possible mechanisms of transmission of the phenotypes from the father to the children. SOURCES A non-systematic review in the PubMed database found few publications in which paternal obesity was implicated in the adverse transmission of characteristics to offspring. Specific articles on epigenetics were also evalu...

A successful cow/calf operation requires that a large percentage of cows wean a live calf every year. A live calf at weaning time requires survival of the offspring from birth to weaning. USDA beef researchers and rancher surveys report that diseases, including scours and pneumonia, were the second leading cause of baby calf deaths. Difficulty at birth was the single largest source of death los...

Abstract A father’s lifetime experience is a major risk factor for range of diseases in an individual. The influences exposure can also be transmitted to offspring. Previous studies demonstrated that plasticisers damage the male offspring reproductive system, but link between mammalian research and human non-obstructive azoospermia remains underexplored. Here, we analysed reproduction-related g...

Epigenetic information can be inherited through the mammalian germline, and represents a plausible transgenerational carrier of environmental information. To test whether transgenerational inheritance of environmental information occurs in mammals, we carried out an expression profiling screen for genes in mice that responded to paternal diet. Offspring of males fed a low protein diet exhibited...

Maternal testosterone has been indicated to affect sex ratio of offspring. The present study was conducted to elucidate the role of androgen receptor in this regard by blockade of androgen receptor using flutamide in female mice. Mice were randomly assigned to two experimental groups. Mice in the control (n = 20) and treatment (n = 20) groups received 8 IU equine chorionic gonadotropin (eCG) fo...

Consider a branching random walk on R, with offspring distribution Z and nonnegative displacement distribution W . We say that explosion occurs if an infinite number of particles may be found within a finite distance of the origin. In this paper, we investigate this phenomenon when the offspring distribution Z is heavy-tailed. Under an appropriate condition, we are able to characterize the pair...

Background: Proteins are known mainly based on their metabolic and nutritional functions including protein synthesis and a source of energy. In spite of various physiological properties attributed to proteins, their functions have neither been addressed by assessing quality of proteins nor by nutrition and dietetic practices. Methods: Studies were included if they were randomized animal studies...

An experiment was conducted to study the effect of metabolizable energy (ME) and protein of Japanese quails diets on offspring performance and antibody production against sheep red blood cell (SRBC). A total of 432 Japanese quails (13 week-old) were divided into nine treatments. Each treatment comprised four replicates of twelve birds (9 female and 3 male). Nine diets including three levels of ...

Animal studies and a handful of prospective human studies have demonstrated that young offspring exposed to maternal prenatal stress show abnormalities in immune parameters and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis function. No study has examined the effect of maternal prenatal depression on offspring inflammation and HPA axis activity in adulthood, nor the putative role of child maltreatme...

Some evidence suggests that light-to-moderate alcohol consumption during pregnancy is associated with adverse outcomes in the offspring, but the precise biological mechanisms underlying such associations are currently unknown. Epigenetic modifications have been suggested as one potential