The long-term goals of this multidisciplinary research team are to understand the regulatory mechanisms that underlie developmental programming in beef cattle and ultimately to develop nutritional strategies to improve the efficiency of beef cattle production.

Maternal nutrition insults during critical windows of development impair offspring development and tissue programming [1]. Furthermore, several studies have highlighted the long-term adverse effects of maternal imbalances on offspring performance [2–4]. However, the genomic mechanisms driving fetal programming in response to maternal nutrition and other environmental factors are still to be elucidated. 

To gain insights into the mechanisms involved with fetal programming, the team has developed a bovine pregnancy model where maternal, fetal, and placental tissues are collected at several time-points throughout gestation and birth [5]. Based on transcriptomics analysis (RNA-Seq), they assess how maternal nutrition leads to changes in gene expression profile in tissues such as the liver and muscle. Furthermore, they use co-expression network approaches (PCIT) to identify hub genes and key transcription factors (TFs) modulating gene expression; see Fig. 1.

Due to the large amount of data and the increased computing power involved, these analyses are performed on high-performance computing (HPC) systems at CCAST where state-of-the-art bioinformatic tools are used for transcript mapping, gene annotation, co-expression network construction, and functional analyses. 

Examples of their research outputs that were made possible by the use of CCAST resources include recent publications in Scientific Reports and Genes.

The projects are funded by the USDA-NIFA, ND State Board of Agricultural Research and Education, ND Agricultural Experimental Station, and Purina.