Together with environmental factors, physiological maturity at birth is a major determinant for neonatal survival and postnatal development in mammalian species. Maturity at birth is the outcome of complex mechanisms of intra-uterine development and maturation during the end of gestation. In pig ...
Neonatal mortality is mostly due to a reduced piglet maturity. An essential question for adaptation to extra-uterine environment lies in the optimization of the crosstalk between maternal and fetal genomes for a distribution of resources that allows fetuses to express healthier phenotypes at birt...