Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

The developmental influence derived during fetal development contributes to health and diseases over the life cycle. The contributions of genetic and epigenetic factors can cause differences in fetal development and the onset and severity of future diseases, and the responses can differ between females and males. The placenta is the core organ that mediates fetal growth and development during pregnancy and plays a key role in the sex-dependent effects between female and male fetuses. The placenta has the same sex of a fetus differed by sex chromosome complements between females and males. Before the development of reproductive organs that expose the placenta to sex hormones, the sex chromosome complements may give rise to unequal gene expression that may lead to sex-dependent expression differences in functional and physiological features. For the regulation of the sex-dependent gene expression, epigenetic marks dependent on sex chromosomes also mediates the epigenetic regulation during early development. The placenta also consists of various cell types differentiated from different cellular origins. This placental cell layer exhibits distinct gene expression accompanied by distinctive patterns of epigenetic marks, and they reflect the influence of the sex and cell origin mediating the regulation of associated genes. DNA methylation and Histone modifications are the epigenetic marks that regulate the gene expression, which can activate or repress it. These epigenetic marks play key roles in placental development and diseases reflected in the associated patterns. Therefore, my studies on sex differences associated with its epigenome in the placental cells will aim to provide an understanding of the fundamental epigenetic profiles of the placental that will also help have better knowledge of pregnancy outcomes and complications.