Epigenetic signature of prenatal heat stress: DNA methylation changes in whole blood of dairy calves from birth to weaning
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The maternal environment during gestation influences fetal development, with long-lasting effects on postnatal health and productivity.This study evaluated the effect of prenatal heat stress (PNHS) on blood DNA methylation of dairy calves immediately after birth and whether such modifications persist into early life.Holstein calves were born to dams exposed to either PNHS (n = 36, temperature-humidity index >68, access to shade of a freestall barn) or prenatal cooling (PNTN; n = 37, access to shade and evaporative cooling) during the last 54 ± 5 d of gestation.Whole-genome enzymatic DNA methyl sequencing was performed on blood samples collected at birth (d 0; n = 3 PNHS, n = 5 PNTN) and 1 wk post-weaning (d 63 of age; n = 8 PNHS, n = 8 PNTN).From birth onward, all calves were actively cooled and managed under the same conditions.At birth, 682,898 differentially methylated cytosines (DMC) were identified genome-wide.Principal component analysis using 55,304 DMC located in genes expressed in blood cells revealed a clear clustering by prenatal treatment.However, at weaning, clear clustering by treatment was no longer observed using 23,977 treatment-associated DMC in blood-expressed genes, despite 97,289 DMC persisting genome-wide from birth to weaning.Immune cell deconvolution showed only minor differences in granulocytes (d 0) and CD4/CD8 + T cell proportions (d 63), suggesting methylation changes were not driven by cell-type composition.Gene ontology analysis identified more than 30 enriched pathways at each time point, mainly related to immunity, inflammation, and metabolism.Several differentially methylated genes (e.g., NMI, DUSP6, CD38, VPS37B) were common to both time points, suggesting persistent programming.Despite attenuation of global differences at weaning, a subset of 500 highly discriminant DMC remained informative for treatment separa-tion.Blood-based methylation signatures could serve as early biomarkers of prenatal heat stress exposure and guide management and selection strategies to improve calf resilience.
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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) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
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".