Project description:An important question for the use of the mouse as a model for studying human disease is the degree of functional conservation of genetic control pathways from human to mouse. The human and mouse placenta show structural similarities but there have been no systematic attempt to assess their molecular similarities or differences. We built a comprehensive database of protein and microarray data for the highly vascular exchange region micro-dissected from the human and mouse placenta near-term. Abnormalities in this region are associated with two of the most common and serious complications of human pregnancy, maternal preeclampsia (PE) and fetal intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR), each disorder affecting ~5% of all pregnancies. Over 7,000 orthologs were detected with 70% co-expressed and over 80% of genes known to cause placental phenotypes in mouse were co-expressed. These genes form a tight protein-protein interaction network with novel candidate genes likely to be important in placental structure and/or function. The entire data is available as a web-accessible database to guide the informed development of mouse models to study human disease This experiment is now fully represented in NCBI Peptidome database with accession PSE115; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/peptidome/search/index.shtml?acc=PSE115 Microdissection of human villous trees and mouse placental labyrinth. Tissues were split for microarray and protein analysis. For protein analysis samples were first fractionated by differential sucrose gradients into mitochrondria, cytosol, microsomes and nuclei. Mitochrondira and neuclei were each extracted by two different methods for soluble and insoluble material. Each subcellular fraction for each tissue was analysed in quintuplet by 9 step 2 dimensional LC/MSMS. This generated a total of 270 mzXML files for each tissue.
Project description:An important question for the use of the mouse as a model for studying human disease is the degree of functional conservation of genetic control pathways from human to mouse. The human and mouse placenta show structural similarities but there have been no systematic attempt to assess their molecular similarities or differences. We built a comprehensive database of protein and microarray data for the highly vascular exchange region micro-dissected from the human and mouse placenta near-term. Abnormalities in this region are associated with two of the most common and serious complications of human pregnancy, maternal preeclampsia (PE) and fetal intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR), each disorder affecting ~5% of all pregnancies. Over 7,000 orthologs were detected with 70% co-expressed and over 80% of genes known to cause placental phenotypes in mouse were co-expressed. These genes form a tight protein-protein interaction network with novel candidate genes likely to be important in placental structure and/or function. The entire data is available as a web-accessible database to guide the informed development of mouse models to study human disease. This experiment is now fully represented in the NCBI Peptidome database with accession PSE115.
Project description:Background: Maternal iron deficiency (ID) is associated with poor pregnancy and fetal outcomes. The effect is thought to be mediated by the placenta but there is no comprehensive assessment of placental response to maternal ID. Additionally, whether the influence of maternal ID on the placenta differs by fetal sex is unknown. Objectives: Our primary aim was to identify gene and protein signatures of ID mouse placentas at mid-gestation. A secondary objective was to profile the expression of iron genes in mouse placentas across gestation. Methods: We used a real-time PCR based array to determine the mRNA expression of all known iron genes in mouse placentas at embryonic day (E) 12.5, E14.5, E16.5, and E19.5 (n=3 placentas/time point). To determine the effect of maternal ID, we performed RNA sequencing and proteomics in male and female placentas from ID and iron adequate mice at E12.5 (n=8 dams/diet). Results: In female placentas, six genes including transferrin receptor (Tfrc) and solute carrier family 11 member 2 were significantly changed by maternal ID. An additional 154 genes were altered in male ID placentas. Proteomic analysis quantified 7662 proteins in the placenta. Proteins translated from iron responsive element (IRE) containing mRNAs were altered in abundance; ferritin and ferroportin 1 decreased while TFRC increased in ID placenta. Less than 4% of the significantly altered genes in ID placentas occurred both at the transcriptional and translational levels. Conclusions: Our data demonstrate that the impact of maternal ID on placental gene expression in mice is limited in scope and magnitude at mid-gestation. We provide strong evidence for IRE-based transcriptional and translational coordination of iron gene expression in the mouse placenta. Finally, we discover sexually dimorphic effects of maternal ID on placental gene expression, with more genes and pathways altered in male compared with female mouse placentas.
Project description:In this study, we compared the genome-wide transcriptome of mouse and human placentas across gestation to identify species-specific signatures of early development. We also compared human placental signatures to purified primary cytotrophoblasts (CTB) isolated from placentae at different gestational age.
Project description:Embryonic mouse brain development involves a sequential differentiation of multipotent progenitor cells into neurons and glia. Using microarrays and large 2-D electrophoresis, we investigated the transcriptome and proteome of mouse brains at embryonic days 9.5, 11.5 and 13.5. During this developmental period, neural progenitor cells shift from proliferation to neuronal differentiation. As expected, we detected numerous expression changes between the time points investigated but interestingly, the rate of alteration was about 10% to 13% of all proteins and mRNAs during every two days of development. Furthermore, up- and downregulation was balanced. This was confirmed for two additional stages of development, embryonic day 16 and 18. We hypothesize that during embryonic development, the rate of protein expression alteration is rather constant due to a limitation of cellular resources such as energy, space and free water. The similar complexity found at the transcriptome and proteome level at all stages suggests, that changes in relative concentration of gene products rather than an increased number of gene products dominate throughout cellular differentiation. We found that metabolism and cell cycle related gene products were downregulated in expression when precursor cells switched from proliferation to neuronal differentiation (day 9.5 to 11.5), whereas neuron specific gene products were upregulated. A detailed analysis revealed their implication in differentiation related processes such as rearrangement of the actin cytoskeleton as well as Notch and Wnt signaling pathways. Keywords: time course, development, transcriptome, proteome