(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- If you're pregnant and have a craving for bacon
and eggs, you've finally got an excuse. A team of University of North
Carolina researchers has shown that choline plays a critical role in helping
fetal brains develop regions associated with memory. Meats, including pork,
and chicken eggs are rich in choline.
"Our study in mice indicates that the diet of a pregnant mother, especially
choline in that diet, can change the epigenetic switches that control brain
development in the fetus" Steven Zeisel, the senior scientist involved in
the work was quoted as saying. "Understanding more about how diet modifies
our genes could be very important for assuring optimal development."
Zeisel and colleagues fed two groups of pregnant mice different diets during
the window of time when a fetus develops its hippocampus, that part of the
brain responsible for memory. The first group received no choline while the
other received choline. The group that received no choline had changes in
epigenetic marks on the proteins that wrap genes in cells responsible for
the creation of new brain cells (neural progenitor cells).
By isolating these cells from the developing brains and growing them in cell
culture, the scientists determined the expression of genes for two proteins
that regulate neuronal cell creation and maturation. These two proteins were
changed in the brains of fetuses whose mothers were fed low choline diets.
"We may never be able to call bacon a health food with a straight face, but
the emerging field of epigenetics is already making us rethink those things
that we consider healthful and unhealthful," Gerald Weissmann, MD,
Editor-in-Chief of the FASEB Journal, was quoted as saying. "This is yet
another example showing that good prenatal nutrition is vitally important
throughout a child's entire lifetime."
SOURCE: FASEB Journal, January, 2010
