Data from: Maternal stress has divergent effects on gene expression patterns in the brains of male and female threespine stickleback

We identified sexually divergent effects of maternal stress on the brain transcriptome. In males, genes that were up-regulated by maternal stress were enriched for processes involved in synaptic function and organization and steroid hormone mediated signaling pathways, whereas in females genes that were up-regulated by maternal stress were enriched for processes involved in protein translation and metabolic functions. The expression of several genes involved in the hypothalamic-pituitary-interrenal response to stress and epigenetic processes such as the regulation of DNA methylation patterns and miRNAs increased in males and not in females.

These data suggest that maternal stress has markedly different effects on cellular pathways in the brains of male and female offspring of mothers that are exposed to stress, which could have important implications when assessing the long-term ecological and evolutionary impacts of stress across generations.

Usage notes

CLC_Alignment_Read_Counts.csv Total read counts per transcript for each sample from CLC alignment. UM = male from unstressed mother, UF = female from unstressed mother, SM = male from stressed mother, SF = female from stressed mother. SticklebackMaternalStress.csv