Maternal high-fat diet is associated with impaired fetal lung development.

Maternal nutrition has a profound long-term impact on infant health. Poor maternal nutrition influences placental development and fetal growth, resulting in low birth weight, which is strongly associated with the risk of developing chronic diseases, including heart disease, hypertension, asthma, and type 2 diabetes, later in life. Few studies have delineated the mechanisms by which maternal nutrition affects fetal lung development.

The Neurospora crassa OS MAPK pathway-activated transcription factor ASL-1 contributes to circadian rhythms in pathway responsive clock-controlled genes.

The OS-pathway mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascade of Neurospora crassa is responsible for adaptation to osmotic stress. Activation of the MAPK, OS-2, leads to the transcriptional induction of many genes involved in the osmotic stress response. We previously demonstrated that there is a circadian rhythm in the phosphorylation of OS-2 under constant non-stress inducing conditions.

Direct transcriptional control of a p38 MAPK pathway by the circadian clock in Neurospora crassa.

MAPK signal transduction pathways are important regulators of stress responses, cellular growth, and differentiation. In Neurospora, the circadian clock controls rhythms in phosphorylation of the p38-like MAPK (OS-2); however, the mechanism for this regulation is not known. We show that the WCC, a transcription factor and clock component, binds to the os-4 MAPKKK promoter in response to light and rhythmically in constant darkness, peaking in the subjective morning.