Mother's exercise during pregnancy programmes vasomotor function in adult offspring.

The intrauterine environment is influenced by maternal behaviour and programmes atherosclerotic disease susceptibility in offspring. The aim of this investigation was to test the hypothesis that mothers' exercise during pregnancy improves endothelial function in 3-, 5- and 9-month-old porcine offspring. The pregnant sows in the exercise group ran for an average of 39.

The polycomb group protein EED varies in its ability to access the nucleus in porcine oocytes and cleavage stage embryos.

Chromatin-modifying complexes serve essential functions during mammalian embryonic development. Polycomb group proteins EED, SUZ12, and EZH2 have been shown to mediate methylation of the lysine 27 residue of histone protein H3 (H3K27), an epigenetic mark that is linked with transcriptional repression. H3K27 trimethylation has been shown to be present on chromatin in mature porcine oocytes, pronuclear and 2-cell stage embryos, with H3K27 trimethylation decreasing at the 4-cell stage and not detectable in blastocyst stage embryos.