Current approaches and developments in transcript profiling of the human placenta

AbstractBACKGROUNDThe placenta is the active interface between mother and foetus, bearing the molecular marks of rapid development and exposuresin utero. The placenta is routinely discarded at delivery, providing a valuable resource to explore maternal-offspring health and disease in pregnancy. Genome-wide profiling of the human placental transcriptome provides an unbiased approach to study normal maternal –placental–foetal physiology and pathologies.OBJECTIVE AND RATIONALETo date, many studies have examined the human placental transcriptome, but often within a narrow focus. This review aims to provide a comprehensive overview of human placental transcriptome studies, encompassing those from the cellular to tissue levels and contextualize current findings from a broader perspective. We have consolidated studies into overarching themes, summarized key research findings and addressed important considerations in study design, as a means to promote wider data sharing and support larger meta-analysis of already available data and greater collaboration between researchers in order to fully capitalize on the potential of transcript profiling in future studies.SEARCH METHODSThe PubMed database, National Center for Biotechnology Information and European Bioinformatics Institute dataset repositories were searched, to identify all relevant human studies using ‘placenta’, ‘decidua’, ‘trophoblast’, ‘transcriptome’, ‘microarray’ and ‘RNA sequencing’ as search te...
Source: Human Reproduction Update - Category: OBGYN Source Type: research