Effects of paternal high-fat diet and maternal rearing environment on the gut microbiota and behavior

Exposing a male rat to an obesogenic high-fat diet (HFD) influences attractiveness to potential female mates, the subsequent interaction of female mates with infant offspring, and the development of stress-related behavioral and neural responses in offspring. To examine the stomach and fecal microbiome’s potential roles, fecal samples from 44 offspring and stomach samples from offspring and their fathers were collected and bacterial community composition was studied by 16 small subunit ribosomal RNA (16S rRNA) gene sequencing. Paternal diet (control, high-fat), maternal housing conditions (standard or semi-naturalistic housing), and maternal care (quality of nursing and other maternal behaviors) affected the within-subjects alpha-diversity of the offspring stomach and fecal microbiomes. We provide evidence from beta-diversity analyses that paternal diet and maternal behavior induced community-wide shifts to the adult offspring gut microbiome. Additionally, we show that paternal HFD significantly altered the adult offspring Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes ratio, an indicator of obesogenic potential in the gut microbiome. Additional machine-learning analyses indicated that microbial species driving these differences converged on Bifidobacterium pseudolongum. These results suggest that differences in early-life care induced by paternal diet and maternal care significantly influence the microbiota composition of offspring through the microbiota-gut-brain axis, having implications for adult stress reactivity.