PUBLICATION
Chronic cortisol exposure in early development leads to neuroendocrine dysregulation in adulthood
- Authors
- Hartig, E.I., Zhu, S., King, B.L., Coffman, J.A.
- ID
- ZDB-PUB-200805-2
- Date
- 2020
- Source
- BMC research notes 13: 366 (Journal)
- Registered Authors
- Coffman, James A.
- Keywords
- Cortisol, Developmental programming, Early life stress, Epigenetic, Glucocorticoids
- Datasets
- GEO:GSE137987
- MeSH Terms
-
- Animals
- Brain
- Gene Expression
- Glucocorticoids
- Hydrocortisone*
- Zebrafish*/genetics
- PubMed
- 32746894 Full text @ BMC Res. Notes
Citation
Hartig, E.I., Zhu, S., King, B.L., Coffman, J.A. (2020) Chronic cortisol exposure in early development leads to neuroendocrine dysregulation in adulthood. BMC research notes. 13:366.
Abstract
Objective Chronic early life stress can affect development of the neuroendocrine stress system, leading to its persistent dysregulation and consequently increased disease risk in adulthood. One contributing factor is thought to be epigenetic programming in response to chronic cortisol exposure during early development. We have previously shown that zebrafish embryos treated chronically with cortisol develop into adults with constitutively elevated whole-body cortisol and aberrant immune gene expression. Here we further characterize that phenotype by assessing persistent effects of the treatment on cortisol tissue distribution and dynamics, chromatin accessibility, and activities of glucocorticoid-responsive regulatory genes klf9 and fkbp5. To that end cortisol levels in different tissues of fed and fasted adults were measured using ELISA, open chromatin in adult blood cells was mapped using ATAC-seq, and gene activity in adult blood and brain cells was measured using qRT-PCR.
Results Adults derived from cortisol-treated embryos have elevated whole-body cortisol with aberrantly regulated tissue distribution and dynamics that correlate with differential activity of klf9 and fkbp5 in blood and brain.
Genes / Markers
Expression
Phenotype
Mutations / Transgenics
Human Disease / Model
Sequence Targeting Reagents
Fish
Orthology
Engineered Foreign Genes
Mapping