Maud Fertig, PhD student in our laboratory, presented her research on the interactions between maternal nutrition, environmental contaminant exposure and brain development.
Her study, entitled “Folate deficiency during gestation and lactation modulates offspring brain response to prenatal dioxin exposure in rats”, aims to better understand how maternal folate status can modulate the consequences of early-life exposure to an environmental contaminant on brain development and cognitive functions in offspring.
🔬 Using an experimental model combining maternal folate deficiency and prenatal exposure to dioxin (TCDD), this research integrates behavioural, metabolic, transcriptomic and histological approaches.
The findings reveal sex-dependent effects, including alterations in behaviour and one-carbon metabolism, as well as distinct gene expression profiles involving pathways related to energy metabolism and synaptogenesis. These observations are also accompanied by histological hallmarks of neuroinflammation.
🧠This work contributes to the laboratory’s research aimed at better understanding the complex interactions between nutrition and environmental exposures during critical developmental windows, and their potential consequences for brain development and long-term health.
🙏 We warmly thank the Société Française de Toxicologie (SFT) and the Société Française de Biochimie et Biologie Moléculaire (SFBBM) for their financial support. Thanks to their travel grant, Maud was able to attend this international congress and present the laboratory’s research.
👏 Congratulations to Maud Fertig and all the co-authors involved in this work: Rémy Umoret, Okan Baspinar, Pauline Dimofski, Aurélie Robert, Justine Paoli, E.Trognon, Jean-Marc Alberto, Ramia Safar Alsaied, Brigitte Leininger-Muller !
