Genomic Basis of Developmental Programming in Livestock: Insights into Nutrition, Health, and Production

Early environmental factors during critical windows of development shape the long-term performance of offspring through genetic and epigenetic mechanisms. Maternal factors, mainly nutrition, have been pointed out as the major factor underlying fetal developmental programming. However, growing evidence has revealed that paternal-mediated effects are equally important. Studies with livestock have demonstrated that developmental programming has consequences on offspring growth, development, and health. Furthermore, the genetic information can be epigenetically reprogrammed in the parental germline, leading to transgenerational phenotypic changes in the offspring. Epigenetic factors, such as DNA methylation, non-coding RNAs, and histone post-transcriptional modification, have been suggested as the mechanisms underlying the parental-mediated effects. The increasing availability of genomics tools and high throughput technologies has opened new opportunities to untangle the complex relationship between environmental factors, fetal developmental programming, inheritance mechanisms, and long-term phenotypic effects.

Elucidating genetic and epigenetic mechanisms underlying parental-mediated effects and other environmental factors is required to improve our understanding of developmental programming and long-term consequences on livestock performance and efficiency. Moreover, mechanistic insights into the transgenerational epigenetic inheritance of fetal developmental programming and determination of the crosstalk between the different regulatory layers shaping the phenotype is still needed. Shedding light on these questions will help us to design strategies to mitigate the adverse effects of developmental programming.

This Research Topic will focus on analyzing the genomic and epigenomic mechanisms underlying fetal developmental programming in response to parental and other environmental factors. We welcome Original Research articles, Brief Research Reports, Reviews, and Methods covering (but not limited to) the following topics:

• Parental nutritional effects on fetal tissue development and programming;
• Effects of parental nutrition and environmental factors on offspring production traits;
• Gene nutrient interaction during development;
• Genomic and epigenomic changes in response to parental nutrition and other environmental effects;
• Advancements in the role of non-coding RNAs, DNA methylation, and chromatin remodeling on fetal genome regulation and transgenerational epigenetic inheritance;
• Systems biology approaches to dissect the genome to phenome relationship in response to parental and environmental factors.