Figure 5. Environmental Cues during Development, Developmental Plasticity, and Determination of the Adult Phenotype.

Prenatal cues predicting a nutritionally sparse environment will cause a shift in the trajectory of structural and functional development toward a phenotype matched to that environment. Such a phenotype will have a reduced capacity to cope with a nutritionally rich environment later in life, increasing the risk of metabolic disease. Postnatal cues, such as childhood overnutrition leading to compensatory growth, could further shift the positioning of the adult phenotype, exacerbating the mismatch (dashed lines) between phenotype and environment. Although there is a continuous range of possible developmental trajectories and multiple sequential cues that act during development, for simplicity only two developmental cues (before and after birth) and three trajectories are shown.