First, the researchers asked whether offspring fat mass is more strongly related to maternal BMI than paternal BMI; it should be if the hypothesis is true.
Second, they asked whether a genetic indicator of maternal fatness “ the A variant of the FTO gene “ is related to offspring fat mass. A statistical association between maternal FTO genotype and offspring fat mass, after taking account of the offspring's own FTO genotype, would support the developmental nutrition hypothesis.
The researchers used data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) to look for associations between the pre-pregnancy BMI of the parents of about 4,000 children and the children's fat mass at ages nine to eleven years.
They found that both maternal and paternal BMI were positively associated with offspring fat mass but the effect of maternal BMI was greater than the effect of paternal BMI. However, the greater effect of maternal BMI was too weak to explain the recent obesity epidemic.
When the researchers examined maternal FTO genotypes and offspring fat mass, there was no statistical evidence to suggest that differences in offspring fat mass were related to the maternal FTO genotype.
Professor Lawlor said: If true, the developmental over-nutrition hypothesis has wide-reaching public health implications as it means the obesity epidemic could accelerate across generations and continue to do so for some time, even with effective obesity prevention programmes.
However, our study indicates that developmental overnutrition has not been a major driver of the recent obesity epidemic. Therefore, interventions that aim to improve people's diet and to increase their physical activity levels could slow or even halt the epidemic.
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Rapid genetic characterization also opens up a new world of possibilities for identifying the bacterial culprits in outbreaks and finding out where they originated.
E. coli usually come from animal waste contaminating human sources of food or water. Finding out how the bacteria entered the food source always has been a challenge, but now food safety experts can use DNA just like police use DNA at crime scenes. Scientists will be able to identify those bacteria making people sick, find out where they entered the food source and then use this information to reduce contamination.
This is the first time anyone has been able to classify very closely related groups, Whittam said.
This is also the first time we can tell the differences in how they cause disease.
Whittam also has plans to use this methodology to study other bacterial strains, like Shigella, a major cause of diarrhea around the world. This new equipment can be used to identify hundreds of thousands of pathogenic bacteria, Whittam said.
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