Prenatal Malnutrition-Induced Epigenetic Dysregulation as a Risk Factor for Type 2 Diabetes

Figure 1

The thrifty phenotype hypothesis. Plasticity of the epigenome during development affords an opportunity for the developing organism to “preadapt” to the future adult environment, which provides a survival advantage. However, in settings in which the fetal environment does not match the adult environment—for example, fetal development in a nutrient-poor environment (such as maternal starvation) coupled with a nutrient-rich adult environment—the resulting “catch-up” growth and disconnection between fetal programming and the adult environment can predispose to adult metabolic disease, including obesity and type II diabetes. This figure and its legend are reproduced from Walker and Ho [30] with permission from Nature Publishing Group.