Project description:The placenta is an understudied organ that has a critical role in mammalian development. In early placental development, the essential process of trophoblast invasion establishes adequate blood flow between mother and fetus. Despite its importance, little is known about the genomic regions responsible for regulating trophoblast invasion. In order to identify enhancers that are important for regulating the process, we carried out ChIP-Seq for an enhancer-associated mark at two time points during early placental development. Combining these data with RNA-Seq data and protein interaction data allowed us to construct a gene-enhancer network describing trophoblast invasion.
Project description:The placenta is an understudied organ that has a critical role in mammalian development. In early placental development, the essential process of trophoblast invasion establishes adequate blood flow between mother and fetus. Despite its importance, little is known about the genomic regions responsible for regulating trophoblast invasion. In order to identify enhancers that are important for regulating the process, we carried out ChIP-Seq for an enhancer-associated mark at two time points during early placental development. Combining these data with RNA-Seq data and protein interaction data allowed us to construct a gene-enhancer network describing trophoblast invasion.
Project description:In this study, we performed chromatin immunoprecipitation-on-chip (ChIP-chip) analysis and identified the gene for high-temperature requirement protein A4 (HtrA4) as a GCM1 target gene, which encodes a serine protease facilitating cleavage of fibronectin and invasion of placental cells. Importantly, HtrA4 is immunolocalized in EVTs at the maternal-fetal interface, and its expression is decreased by hypoxia and in preeclampsia, a pregnancy complication associated with placental hypoxia and shallow trophoblast invasion.
Project description:KDM5C is a H3K4- specific demethylase, which has multiple biological roles in development and disease. However, the role of KDM5C in trophoblasts at the maternal-fetal interface remains unknown. Here, we showed that KDM5C was upregulated in placental trophoblasts from patient with recurrent miscarriage (RM). Trophoblasts proliferation and invasion was inhibited by KDM5C overexpression and was enhanced by KDM5C knockdown. Interestingly, KDM5C knockdown promoted trophoblast invasion in villous explant culture system. RNA-seq and ChIP-seq analyses revealed that KDM5C exerts anti-proliferation and anti-invasion effect by directly modulating H3K4 methylation level to repress the expression of a number of key regulatory genes. We show that two of these genes, TGFβ2, RAGE, are essential for the proliferation and invasion of trophoblasts. Taken together, our results show that the KDM5C is regulator of trophoblast function during early pregnancy and indicated that KDM5C may be involved in the pathogenesis of RM. To characterize genome-wide H3K4me3 chromatin-state of HTR-8/SVneo cells.
Project description:The hemochorial placentation site is characterized by a dynamic interplay between trophoblast cells and maternal cells. These cells cooperate to establish an interface required for nutrient delivery to promote fetal growth. In the human, trophoblast cells penetrate deep into the uterus. This is not a consistent feature of hemochorial placentation and has hindered the establishment of suitable animal models. The rat represents an intriguing model for investigating hemochorial placentation with deep trophoblast cell invasion. In this study, we used single cell RNA sequencing to characterize the transcriptome of the invasive trophoblast cell lineage, as well as other cell populations within the rat uterine-placental interface during early (gestation day, gd, 15.5) and late (gd 19.5) stages of intrauterine trophoblast cell invasion. We identified a robust set of transcripts that define invasive trophoblast cells, as well as transcripts that distinguished endothelial, smooth muscle, natural killer, and macrophage cells. Invasive trophoblast, immune, and endothelial cell populations exhibited distinct spatial relationships within the uterine-placental interface. Furthermore, the maturation stage of invasive trophoblast cell development could be determined by assessing gestation-stage dependent changes in transcript expression. Finally, and most importantly, expression of a prominent subset of rat invasive trophoblast cell transcripts is conserved in the invasive extravillous trophoblast cell lineage of the human placenta. These findings provide foundational data to identify and interrogate key conserved regulatory mechanisms essential for development and function of an important compartment within the hemochorial placentation site that is essential for a healthy pregnancy.
Project description:Healthy placental development is essential for reproductive success; failure of the feto-maternal interface results in preeclampsia and intrauterine growth retardation. We found that grainyhead-like 2 (GRHL2), a CP2-type transcription factor, is highly expressed in chorionic trophoblast cells, including basal chorionic trophoblast (BCT) cells located at the chorioallantoic interface in murine placentas. Placentas from Grhl2-deficient mouse embryos displayed defects in BCT cell polarity and basement membrane integrity at the chorioallantoic interface, as well as a severe disruption of labyrinth branchingmorphogenesis.Selective Grhl2 inactivation only in epiblastderived cells rescued all placental defects but phenocopied intraembryonic defects observed in global Grhl2 deficiency, implying the importance of Grhl2 activity in trophectoderm-derived cells. ChIPseq identified 5282 GRHL2 binding sites in placental tissue. By integrating these data with placental gene expression profiles, we identified direct and indirect Grhl2 targets and found a marked enrichment of GRHL2 binding adjacent to genes downregulated in Grhl2−/− placentas, which encoded known regulators of placental development and epithelial morphogenesis. These genes included that encoding the serine protease inhibitor Kunitz type 1 (Spint1), which regulates BCT cell integrity and labyrinth formation. In human placenta, we found that human orthologs of murine GRHL2 and its targets displayed co-regulation and were expressed in trophoblast cells in a similar domain as in mouse placenta. Our data indicate that a conserved Grhl2-coordinated gene network controls trophoblast branching morphogenesis, thereby facilitating development of the site of feto-maternal exchange. This might have implications for syndromes related to placental dysfunction. In vivo genome-wide examination of binding sites of the transcription factor GRHL2 by ChIP-seq using wild-type murine E17.5 placenta tissue. Two samples in total: one GRHL2 ChIP sample and one IgG ChIP sample using wild-type placentas tissue as antibody control.
Project description:KDM5C is a H3K4- specific demethylase, which has multiple biological roles in development and disease. However, the role of KDM5C in trophoblasts at the maternal-fetal interface remains unknown. Here, we showed that KDM5C was upregulated in placental trophoblasts from patient with recurrent miscarriage (RM). Trophoblasts proliferation and invasion was inhibited by KDM5C overexpression and was enhanced by KDM5C knockdown. Interestingly, KDM5C knockdown promoted trophoblast invasion in villous explant culture system. RNA-seq and ChIP-seq analyses revealed that KDM5C exerts anti-proliferation and anti-invasion effect by directly modulating H3K4 methylation level to repress the expression of a number of key regulatory genes. We show that two of these genes, TGFβ2, RAGE, are essential for the proliferation and invasion of trophoblasts. Taken together, our results show that the KDM5C is regulator of trophoblast function during early pregnancy and indicated that KDM5C may be involved in the pathogenesis of RM. Next Generation Sequencing Facilitates Quantitative Analysis of HTR-8/SVneo cells transduced with control or KDM5C-expression vector, and HTR-8/SVneo cells transduced with NC or KDM5C shRNA-expression vector,
Project description:YY1 is a sequence-specific DNA-binding transcription factor that has many important biological roles. However, its function in trophoblasts at the maternal-foetal interface remains to be elucidated. In this study, we used an mRNA microarray and quantitative reverse transcription-PCR and compared the YY1 mRNA expression level in trophoblasts between patients with recurrent miscarriage (RM) and healthy control subjects. Our results revealed that YY1 mRNA expression was significantly lower in the trophoblasts of the RM group compared with the healthy control group. Furthermore, immunofluorescence and immunohistochemical data showed that YY1 was highly expressed in human placental villi during early pregnancy, especially in cytotrophoblast cells and invasive extravillous trophoblasts, and it was expressed at a much lower level in the placental villi of term pregnancy. YY1 overexpression enhanced the invasion and proliferation of trophoblasts, while knockdown of YY1 repressed these effects. Antibody array screening revealed that YY1 significantly promoted MMP2 expression in trophoblasts. Bioinformatics analysis identified three YY1-binding sites in the MMP2 promoter region, and chromatin immunoprecipitation analysis verified that YY1 binds directly to its promoter region. Importantly, inhibition of YY1 by siRNA clearly decreased trophoblast invasion in an ex vivo explant culture model. Overall, our findings revealed a new regulatory pathway of YY1/MMP2 in trophoblast cells invasion during early pregnancy, and indicated that YY1 may be involved in the pathogenesis of RM. Total RNA was isolated using Trizol from trophoblast cells from three healthy controls (HC) and three recurrent miscarriage (RM) patients. Total RNA were extracted and used for hybridizing Affymetrix chips (GeneChip® Human Transcriptome Array 2.0(HTA2.0)). Data were normalised by gcRMA method and raw p-values adjusted by Bonferroni procedure (1%).