Folate Deficiency and Supplementation Result in DNA Methylation Defects in Sperm.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Folate is a nutrient that is essential for cell proliferation and involved in the biosynthesis of nucleotides and S-adenosylmethionine (SAM). SAM is the methyl donor for numerous cellular biochemical reactions including DNA methylation, an important epigenetic modification implicated in the control of gene expression, genomic imprinting and normal fertility. Although folate supplementation is used as a treatment for human male infertility, little is known about the effects of low or high dietary folate concentrations on sperm DNA methylation patterns. Our goal was to use a mouse model to examine the effects of folic acid deficiency and supplementation on epigenetic patterns in male germ cells. Male Balb/c strain mice were fed, from weaning age (day 21) to one year of age, either a control diet containing an adequate amount of folic acid (2 mg/kg diet), a 7X low folic acid diet (0.3 mg/kg diet) or a 20X high folic acid diet (40 mg/kg diet). The mice were sacrificed at 12 months and reproductive organs (testes, epididymides and seminal vesicles) collected and weighed. Sperm were collected from the cauda epididymides and genomic DNA extracted. Restriction landmark genomic scanning (RLGS) was used to assess genome-wide levels and patterns of DNA methylation (n=4 samples/group). Although weight gain and reproductive organ weights were not affected by the folate deficiency or supplementation, for both treatment groups, RLGS demonstrated evidence of epigenetic abnormalities in sperm. Mice in the folic acid supplemented group exhibited six consistent changes in their methylation profiles, all of which were hypermethylation. Interestingly, among the 14 loci showing methylation alterations in all of the folic acid deficient mice, 10 were hypermethylated and four were hypomethylated. The loci with altered methylation are in the process of being identified using a virtual RLGS profile. Together, the results indicate that DNA methylation patterns in mouse sperm can be altered by long term exposure to both low and high dietary folate. (Supported by CIHR) (poster)
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".