Fuiman Lee A, Perez Kestrel O
Marine Science Institute, The University of Texas at Austin, 750 Channel View Drive, Port Aransas, TX 78373, USA
Marine Science Institute, The University of Texas at Austin, 750 Channel View Drive, Port Aransas, TX 78373, USA.
Proc Biol Sci. 2015 Nov 22;282(1819). doi: 10.1098/rspb.2015.1414.
Metabolic programming occurs when variations in nutrition during a specific developmental window result in long-term metabolic effects. It has been studied almost exclusively in humans and other mammals but never in an ecological context. Here, we report metabolic programming and its functional consequences in a marine fish, red drum. We demonstrate that maternal provisioning of eggs with an essential fatty acid, docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), varies with DHA content of the maternal diet. When offspring are reared on a DHA-replete diet, whole-body DHA content of offspring depends upon the amount of DHA that was in the egg. We further demonstrate that whole-body DHA content is correlated with traits related to offspring fitness (escape responses, routine swimming, growth, and survival). DHA content of red drum eggs produced in nature is in the range where the effects of metabolic programming are most pronounced. Our findings indicate that during a brief developmental window, DHA plays a role in establishing the metabolic capacity for its own uptake or storage, with protracted and possibly permanent effects on ecologically important survival skills of individuals and important implications for dynamics of populations and food webs.
当特定发育窗口期的营养变化导致长期代谢效应时，就会发生代谢编程。此前几乎只在人类和其他哺乳动物中对其进行过研究，从未在生态环境中进行过研究。在此，我们报告了海洋鱼类红鼓鱼中的代谢编程及其功能后果。我们证明，母体向鱼卵提供必需脂肪酸二十二碳六烯酸（DHA）的情况会随母体饮食中的DHA含量而变化。当后代在富含DHA的饮食中饲养时，后代的全身DHA含量取决于鱼卵中的DHA含量。我们进一步证明，全身DHA含量与后代适应性相关的特征（逃避反应、常规游泳、生长和存活）相关。自然界中红鼓鱼卵的DHA含量处于代谢编程效应最为显著的范围内。我们的研究结果表明，在短暂的发育窗口期内，DHA在建立自身摄取或储存的代谢能力方面发挥作用，对个体具有生态学重要意义的生存技能产生持久且可能是永久性的影响，并对种群动态和食物网具有重要意义
