Grant: Project Grant

Preterm birth, defined as delivery prior to 37 weeks of gestation, affects up to 12-13% of all pregnancies. Despite the prevalence and severity of premature delivery, the causes and mechanisms that underlie preterm birth remain unknown. Potential risk factors prior to conception have been identified that correlate with increase susceptibility to preterm birth. These include socioeconomic characteristics, nutritional status, smoke and drug use, physical activity, psychosocial stress and environmental exposure to name a few Furthermore, there has been increasing evidence that preterm birth also may have a genetic predisposition component. The genetic component of preterm birth appears to be transmitted primarily for the maternal side as it has been shown that a woman has an increased risk of delivering prematurely if her mother, sisters or maternal half-sisters have delivered prematurely. We have been investigating the function of a gene called Nodal and we showed that if you mutate this gene, the mother give birth 2 days before term. Thus we believe that this gene is involved in regulating term pregnancy and if we disrut its function, this lead to preterm birth. We now want to see if this is also true in humans. The identification of genes involved in preterm birth is only beginning but it offers a promising avenue to identify factors that regulate the timing of parturition and will lead to the identification of molecular mechanisms involved in regulating the timing of parturition.