Project description:IUGR (Intra-Uterine Growth Restriction) refers to a condition where the foetus does not reach its growth potential in utero. It is supposed to be often linked with placental dysfunction, especially of vascular origin. In this study, 4 pools of three placentas from human normal pregnancies and 4 pools of three placentas from IUGR human pregnancies, obtained after caesarean section near normal term , were used to prepare RNA. The cDNAs prepared from these RNA were hybridized to a Nimblegen expression array in order to detect differences in gene expression between normal and pathological placentas.
Project description:Intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) represents a major obstetric challenge with perinatal complications and a risk factor of developing disease in adult life. Placental insufficiency is one of the common features accompanying IUGR. The aim of this study was to evaluate global placental gene expression profile in IUGR compared to normal pregnancies. Placental samples were collected by eight IUGR pregnancies with placental insufficiency ascertained by Doppler and eight healthy controls. A 30K Human Genome Survey Microarray v.2.0 (Applied Biosystems) was used to evaluate global gene expression profile. Principal component analysis showed good separation in terms of gene expression patterns between the groups. Pathway analysis with Bonferroni correction for multiple testing showed significant (p<0.05) up-regulation of inflammation mediated by chemokine and cytokine signalling pathway in the IUGR placentas. Genes involved in metabolism of glucocorticoids (HSD11B1 and DHRS2) were found differentially expressed. We found no imprinted genes to be differentially expressed and only one gene involved in epigenetic modifications (MBD3) to be down-regulated in the IUGR placentas, indicating that IUGR due to placental insufficiency is not associated to placental imprinting. Subgroup analysis between pure IUGR and IUGR with preeclampsia placentas showed only 27 differentially expressed genes suggesting common pathophysiology. Eight placental samples from normal human placenta compared to eight human placental samples from patients with intrauterine growth restrictions due to placental insufficiency
Project description:Intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) impairs fetal growth and development, perturbs nutrient metabolism, and increases the risk of developing diseases in the postnatal life. However, the underlying mechanisms by which IUGR affects fetuses remain incompletely understood. Here, we applied high-throughput proteomics approach and biochemical analysis to investigate the impact of IUGR on fetal liver.
Project description:The placental microvasculature of the human fetus is essential for the efficient transfer of gases, nutrients and waste between the mother and fetus. Microvascular hypoplasia of the terminal villi is associated with the placental pathology observed in cases of severe Intra Uterine Growth Restriction (IUGR). We used novel methods to isolate a pure population of placental microvascular endothelial cells from control preterm placentas (n=3) and placenta complicated by severe IUGR (n=6) with superimposed preeclampsia (n=5). Distal placental villous tissue was collected to enrich for terminal villi. Tissue was minced, digested and placental microvascular endothelial cells (PlMEC) were positively selected using tocosylated magnetic Dynabeads labeled with Human Endothelial Antigen lectin. The purity of the PlMEC (95%) was assessed by CD31 immunocytochemistry. RNA was extracted from the PlMEC samples and also from 3 term placenta and subjected to Affymetrix microarray analysis (U133Plus2 array chips). Data from the 3 term placentas and 3 preterm PlMEC arrays was used to generate an endothelial cell specific gene profile. This profile was used to identify the endothelial genes differentially regulated in all 6 IUGR cases. BTNL9 and NTRK2 transcripts were upregulated and SAA1, GNAS and SLAMF1 transcripts were downregulated as relative to the preterm controls. These changes were validated by Real time PCR in the PlMEC samples. This novel study is the first to identify endothelial candidate genes that may play a role in the villous hypoplasia of severe IUGR. This work advances our understanding of the molecular defects in placental microvascular endothelial cells in normal and pathologic pregnancies.
Project description:Intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes during adulthood. At day 18 of gestation, we used bilatual uterine artery ligation (BUAL) to restrict nutrient supply to developing rat fetuses to produce IUGR pups. At 2 and 10 weeks of age pancreatic islets were isolated and total RNA extracted using Trizol. Samples with RNA integrity numbers greater than 7 were used to generate libraries
Project description:Intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes in adulthood. A rat model of IUGR induced by bilateral uterine artery ligation at day 18 of gestation, which reduces the blood supply and critical substrates to the fetus, was used to assess the alterations of genome-wide DNA methylation in IUGR islets. At 2 weeks of age, pancreatic islets were isolated and genomic DNA were extracted for TruSeq-HELP tagging assay. Cytosine methylation was compared in the study.
Project description:Intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes in adulthood. A rat model of IUGR induced by bilateral uterine artery ligation at day 18 of gestation, which reduces the blood supply and critical substrates to the fetus, was used to assess the alterations of genome-wide histone modifications in IUGR islets. At 2 and 10 weeks of age, pancreatic islets were isolated and chromatins were extracted for ChIP-Seq study. Chromatin state of H3K4me3, H3K27me3, and H3K27Ac modifications was compared in the study.
Project description:Impaired muscle growth as a result of IUGR is a major contributor to lifelong reductions in muscle mass (sarcopenia) and metabolic disease risk. We use an ovine model of chronic placental insufficiency which restricts nutrient supply from mother to fetus and results in intrauterine growth restriction. In our model of placental insufficiency and IUGR, fetal hindlimb muscles weigh less than normally-grown control fetuses and have smaller myofiber diameters. Given the frequent correlation between functional changes and transcriptional changes, we investigated the effect of chronic placental insufficiency and IUGR on fetal skeletal muscle gene expression. We found that gene expression in the skeletal muscle is significantly altered by chronic placental insufficiency. In gene ontology analysis, we found that genes involved in cell cycle regulation were most significantly affected, with downregulation of several cyclins. These observations may in part account for decreased muscle weight relative to brain weight observed in the late gestation IUGR fetus.
Project description:In this study, we profiled the placental proteome of IUGR twins and normal cotwins from 6 monochorionic twin pairs with selective intrauterine growth restriction (sIUGR).
Project description:Intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) is one of the most common adverse pregnancy outcomes with high risk of perinatal morbidity and mortality, and affects up to 7% of pregnancies. Here, seven pairs of placentas were employed for whole genomic promoter DNA methylation profiling and some of the candidate differentially methylated promoters were further validated in additional twelve pairs of samples. Consistent with previous report, our results further indicated that IUGR associated placentas harbored a distinct promoter DNA hypomethylation pattern and the result was further confirmed byultra-performance liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS)