Increasing evidence suggests that the pre-conception parental environment has long-term consequences for offspring health and disease susceptibility. Though much of the work in this field concentrates on maternal influences, there is growing understanding that fathers also play a significant role in affecting offspring phenotypes. In this study, we investigate effects of altering the proportion of dietary fats and carbohydrates on paternal and offspring body composition and anxiety-related behavior in C57Bl/6-JArc mice. We show that in an isocaloric context, greater dietary fat increased body fat and reduced anxiety-like behavior of studs, whereas increased dietary sucrose had no significant effect. These dietary effects were not reflected in offspring traits, rather, we found sex-specific effects that differed between offspring body composition and behavioral traits. This finding is consistent with past paternal effect studies, where transgenerational effects have been shown to be more prominent in one sex over the other. Here, male offspring of fathers fed high-fat diets were heavier at 10 weeks of age due to increased lean body mass, whereas paternal diet had no significant effect on female offspring body fat or lean mass. In contrast, paternal dietary sugar appeared to have the strongest effects on male offspring behavior, with male offspring of high-sucrose fathers spending less time in the closed arms of the elevated plus maze. Both high-fat and high-sugar paternal diets were found to reduce anxiety-like behavior of female offspring, although this effect was only evident when offspring were fed a control diet. This study provides new understanding of the ways in which diet can shape the behavior of fathers and their offspring and contribute to the development of dietary guidelines to improve obesity and mental health conditions, such as anxiety.

中文翻译：

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父亲膳食脂肪与糖对后代身体成分和焦虑相关行为的影响

越来越多的证据表明，受孕前的父母环境对后代的健康和疾病易感性具有长期影响。尽管这一领域的大部分工作都集中在母亲的影响上，但人们越来越认识到父亲在影响后代表型方面也发挥着重要作用。在这项研究中，我们研究了改变膳食脂肪和碳水化合物的比例对 C57Bl/6-JArc 小鼠父亲和后代身体成分以及焦虑相关行为的影响。我们发现，在等热量背景下，较高的膳食脂肪会增加体脂并减少种马的焦虑样行为，而增加膳食蔗糖则没有显着影响。这些饮食影响并未反映在后代特征中，相反，我们发现后代身体成分和行为特​​征之间存在不同的性别特异性影响。这一发现与过去的父子效应研究一致，其中跨代效应已被证明在一种性别中比另一种性别更为突出。在这里，由于去脂体重增加，父亲喂养高脂肪饮食的雄性后代在 10 周龄时体重增加，而父亲饮食对雌性后代的体脂或去脂体重没有显着影响。相比之下，父亲的饮食糖似乎对雄性后代的行为影响最大，高糖父亲的雄性后代在高架十字迷宫的封闭臂中花费的时间更少。研究发现，高脂肪和高糖的父亲饮食都能减少雌性后代的焦虑样行为，尽管这种效果只有在给后代喂食对照饮食时才明显。这项研究为饮食如何影响父亲及其后代的行为提供了新的认识，并有助于制定饮食指南，以改善肥胖和焦虑等心理健康状况。