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Irving L M H Aye, Fredrick J Rosario, Anita Kramer, Oddrun Kristiansen, Trond M Michelsen, Theresa L Powell, Thomas JanssonAbstractContextCirculating adiponectin levels are decreased in pregnant women with obesity or gestational diabetes, and this is believed to contribute to the insulin resistance and increased risk of fetal overgrowth assoc…

Antonia Hufnagel, Denise S. Fernandez-Twinn, Heather L. Blackmore, Thomas J. Ashmore, Robert A. Heaton, Benjamin Jenkins, Albert Koulman, Iain P. Hargreaves, Catherine E. Aiken, Susan E. OzanneAbstractMaternal obesity is a global problem that increases the risk of short- and long-term adverse outcomes for mother and child, many of which are linked …

J. Allotey, R. Whittle, K. I. E. Snell, M. Smuk, R. Townsend, P. von Dadelszen, A. E. P. Heazell, L. Magee, G. C. S. Smith, J. Sandall, B. Thilaganathan, J. Zamora, R. D. Riley, A. Khalil, S. Thangaratinam, for the IPPIC Collaborative NetworkObjectiveStillbirth is a potentially preventable complication of pregnancy. Identifying women at risk can gu…

Nadejda Capatina, Myriam Hemberger, Graham Burton, Erica Watson, and Hong Wa YungKey pointsEndoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress promotes placental dysmorphogenesis and is associated with poor pregnancy outcomes.We show that unfolded protein response signalling pathways located in the ER drive differentiation of mouse trophoblast stem cells into tropho…

Image credit: The History of Modern BiomedicineIt is with great sadness that we hear of the passing of Roger Short, one of the giants of the field of reproductive biology. Roger’s research interests were broad, but notably he pioneered assays for measuring sex steroids and elucidated their effects on male and female gametogenesis and behaviour in l…

Tessa M. Bertozzi, Jessica L. Becker, Georgina E. T. Blake, Amita Bansal, Duy K. Nguyen, Denise S. Fernandez-Twinn, Susan E. Ozanne, Marisa S. Bartolomei, Rebecca A. Simmons, Erica D. Watson and Anne C. Ferguson-SmithThe agouti viable yellow (Avy) allele is an insertional mutation in the mouse genome caused by a variably methylated intracisternal A…

Esteban Salazar-Petres, Daniela Pereira Carvalho, Jorge Lopez-Tello, Amanda Nancy Sferruzzi-PerriAbstractFetal growth depends on placental function, which requires energy supplied by mitochondria. Here we investigated whether mitochondrial function in the placenta relates to growth of the lightest and heaviest fetuses of each sex within the litter …

Jorge Lopez-Tello, Zoe Schofield, Raymond Kiu, Matthew J. Dalby, Douwe van Sinderen, Gwnaelle Le Gall, Amanda N Sferruzzi-Perri, Lindsay J HallAbstractThe gut microbiota plays a central role in regulating host metabolism. However, while substantial progress has been made in discerning how the microbiota influences host functions post birth and beyo…

Vicente Perez-Garcia, Georgia Lea, Pablo Lopez-Jimenez, Hanneke Okkenhaug, Graham J Burton, Ashley Moffett, Margherita Y Turco, Myriam Hemberger AbstractNormal function of the placenta depends on the earliest developmental stages when trophoblast cells differentiate and invade into the endometrium to establish the definitive maternal-fetal interfac…

Scientists have identified key molecular events in the developing human embryo between days 7 and 14 - one of the most mysterious, yet critical, stages of our development. The second week of gestation represents a critical stage of embryo development, or embryogenesis. Failure of development during this time is one of the major causes of early preg…

Tereza Cindrova-Davies, Xiaohui Zhao, Kay Elder, Carolyn J. P. Jones, Ashley Moffett, Graham J. Burton & Margherita Y. TurcoAbstractAssessment of the endometrium often necessitates a biopsy, which currently involves an invasive, transcervical procedure. Here, we present an alternative technique based on deriving organoids from menstrual flow. We de…

Georgina E. T. Blake, Xiaohui Zhao, Hong wa Yung, Graham J. Burton, Anne C. Ferguson-Smith, Russell S. Hamilton & Erica D. WatsonAbstractThe mechanism behind transgenerational epigenetic inheritance is unclear, particularly through the maternal grandparental line. We previously showed that disruption of folate metabolism in mice by the Mtrr hypomor…

The editors atNature Communicationshave put together an Editors’ Highlights webpage of recent research called “Genetics, genomics and epigenetics” and have featured the article entitled “The RNA landscape of the human placenta in health and disease”.The Editors’ Highlights pagesaim to showcase the 50 best papers recently published in an area. The c…

Amy L Wilkinson, Katerina Menelaou, Joanna Rakoczy, Xiu S Tan, Erica D WatsonAbstractAbnormal uptake or metabolism of folate increases risk of human pregnancy complications, though the mechanism is unclear. Here, we explore how defective folate metabolism influences early development by analysing mice with an Mtrrgt hypomorphic mutation. MTRR is ne…

Malwina Prater, Russell S. Hamilton, Hong Wa Yung, Andrew M. Sharkey, Paul Robson, N. Erlyani Abd Hamid, Eric Jauniaux, D. Stephen Charnock-Jones, Graham J. Burton, Tereza Cindrova-DaviesAbstractThe human placenta is exposed to major environmental changes towards the end of the first trimester associated with full onset of the maternal arterial pla…