How an individual responds to the environment depends upon both personal life history as well as inherited genetic and epigenetic factors from ancestors. Using a ‘two-hit, 3 generations apart’ model, we tested how F3 descendants of rats given in utero exposures to the environmental endocrine-disrupting chemical (EDC) vinclozolin reacted to stress during adolescence in their own lives, focusing on sexually dimorphic phenotypic outcomes. In adulthood, male and female F3 vinclozolin- or vehicle-lineage rats, stressed or non-stressed, were behaviorally characterized on a battery of tests, then euthanized. Serum was used for hormone assays, and brains for qPCR and transcriptome analyses. Results showed that the effects of ancestral exposure to vinclozolin converged with stress experienced during adolescence in a sexually dimorphic manner. Debilitating effects were seen at all levels of the phenotype, including physiology, behavior, brain metabolism, gene expression, and genome-wide transcriptome modifications in specific brain nuclei. Additionally, females were significantly more vulnerable than males to transgenerational effects of vinclozolin on anxiety but not sociality tests. This fundamental transformation occurs in a manner neither predicted by the ancestral exposure or the proximate effects of stress during adolescence, an interaction we refer to as synchronicity.

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