Plasticity of lifelong calorie-restricted C57BL/6J mice in adapting to a medium-fat diet intervention at old age

Fenni Rusli, Mark V. Boekschoten, Vincenzo Borelli, Chen Sun, Carolien Lute, Aswin L. Menke, Joost van den Heuvel, Stefano Salvioli, Claudio Franceschi, Michael Müller, Wilma T. Steegenga*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

10 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Calorie restriction (CR) is a dietary regimen that supports healthy aging. In this study, we investigated the systemic and liver-specific responses caused by a diet switch to a medium-fat (MF) diet in 24-month-old lifelong, CR-exposed mice. This study aimed to increase the knowledge base on dietary alterations of gerontological relevance. Nine-week-old C57BL/6J mice were exposed either to a control, CR, or MF diet. At the age of 24 months, a subset of mice of the CR group was transferred to ad libitumMF feeding (CR-MF). The mice were sacrificed at the age of 28 months, and then, biochemical and molecular analyses were performed. Our results showed that, despite the long-term exposure to the CR regimen, mice in the CR-MF group displayed hyperphagia, rapid weight gain, and hepatic steatosis. However, no hepatic fibrosis/injury or alteration in CR-improved survival was observed in the diet switch group. The liver transcriptomic profile of CR-MF mice largely shifted to a profile similar to the MF-fed animals but leaving ~22% of the 1,578 differentially regulated genes between the CR and MF diet groups comparable with the expression of the lifelong CR group. Therefore, although the diet switch was performed at an old age, the CR-MF-exposed mice showed plasticity in coping with the challenge of a MF diet without developing severe liver pathologies.
Original languageEnglish
Article numbere12696
JournalAging Cell
Volume17
Issue number2
Early online date21 Dec 2017
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2018

Keywords

  • NAFLD
  • Aging
  • DNA methylation
  • Glycomics
  • Liver
  • Long-term CR
  • Transcriptomics

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