High Cholesterol Diet of Fathers Increases Cardiovascular Disease Risk in their Daughters

A research group led by Changcheng Zhou, Professor of Biomedical Sciences and ETOX faculty member, has recently shown that feeding a high cholesterol diet to male mice can lead to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease in their female offspring.  The intergenerational effects appear to be the result of changes in small non-coding RNA molecules in the sperm which are passed to the developing zygote during fertilization.  The research was recently published in the journal JCI Insight and highlighted in UC Riverside News.  Our congratulations to Changcheng and his colleagues for this groundbreaking study. [The figure above is from the JCI article.]