GENETIC AND EPIGENETIC MECHANISMS ON THE RENAL DEVELOPMENT AFTER MATERNAL PROTEIN RESTRICTION

Abstract

There are many reasons why it is important to know about kidney development. Perhaps the most important of these is the increasing amount of evidence to demonstrate that factors which alter the normal developmental process of this organ can have lifelong consequences for the health of the adult. The original Barker hypothesis, more recently termed developmental origins of health and adult disease (DOHaD) hypothesis, proposed that changes in the environment during the development of an organ or system could have permanent deleterious effects leading to increased risk of cardiovascular and/or metabolic disease. Recent findings have shown that kidney is very vulnerable to such influences, with many factors shown to be able to alter both the permanent structure and the level of expression of important functional genes, most likely by the process of epigenetics. Thus it has become increasingly important to understand the precise timing of kidney development and in which exact age kidneys are more susceptive to suffer external influences. The knowledge has been gained by significant advances in technology. One of the techniques is the metanephroi culture, where is possible to quantify the branches (from the ureteric bud to mesenchyme), glomeruli at the early nephrogenesis and the influence of factors with culture medium supplementation. This project aims are to elicited the effects of maternal protein restriction on rats embryos/fetous, using metanephroi culture supplemented with amino acids. Thus, it`s aim to study the mRNA and microRNA present on kidney development.