Although this is the first study suggesting a role of these genes in developmental programming by maternal BMI, studies on adults have demonstrated an upregulation of these genes in association with BMI or obesity in matrices such as adipose tissue (Poitou et al., 2015), whole blood (SLC4A1) (Wang et al., 2017), peripheral blood (AHSP) (Ghosh et al., 2010), and meniscus samples (HBQ1) (Rai et al., 2014). Here, SLC4A1 is linked to obesity due to melanocortin 4 receptor deficiency.