Division of Animal Sciences, University of Missouri, 920 East Campus Drive, Columbia, MO, 65211, USA.
MU Institute for Data Science and Informatics, University of Missouri, 920 East Campus Drive, Columbia, MO, 65211, USA.
Metabolomics. 2024 Nov 4;20(6):126. doi: 10.1007/s11306-024-02189-w.
The placenta plays influential role in the fetal development of mammals. But how the metabolic need of the fetal organs is related to that of the placenta, and whether this relationship is influenced by the sex of the fetus remain poorly understood.
This study used pigs to investigate metabolomic signatures of male and female fetal organs, and determine the relevance of gene expression of the placenta and brain to the metabolism of peripheral organs.
Untargeted metabolomics analysis was performed with the day-45 placenta, kidney, heart, liver, lung and brain of male and female pig fetuses to model sex differences in the metabolism of the peripheral organs relative to that of the brain and placenta. Transcriptomic analysis was performed to investigate the expression of metabolic genes in the placenta and fetal brain of both sexes.
The results of this study show that the fetoplacental metabolic regulation was not only influenced by the fetal sex but also dependent on the metabolic requirement of the individual organs of the fetus. Neural network modeling of metabolomics data revealed differential relationship of the metabolic changes of the peripheral organs with the placenta and fetal brain between males and females. RNA sequencing further showed that genes associated with the metabolism of the peripheral organs were differentially expressed in the placenta and fetal brain.
The findings of this study suggest a regulatory role of the fetal brain and placenta axis in the sex-bias metabolism of the peripheral organs.
胎盘在哺乳动物的胎儿发育中起着重要的作用。但是，胎儿器官的代谢需求与胎盘之间的关系，以及这种关系是否受到胎儿性别的影响，仍知之甚少。
本研究使用猪来研究雄性和雌性胎儿器官的代谢组学特征，并确定胎盘和大脑的基因表达与周围器官代谢的相关性。
对第 45 天的雄性和雌性猪胎儿的胎盘、肾脏、心脏、肝脏、肺和大脑进行非靶向代谢组学分析，以模拟外周器官代谢与大脑和胎盘之间的性别差异。进行转录组分析，以研究胎盘和胎儿大脑中雄性和雌性的代谢基因表达。
本研究结果表明，胎-胎盘代谢调节不仅受胎儿性别影响，还依赖于胎儿各个器官的代谢需求。代谢组学数据的神经网络模型揭示了雄性和雌性外周器官代谢变化与胎盘和胎儿大脑之间的差异关系。RNA 测序进一步表明，与外周器官代谢相关的基因在胎盘和胎儿大脑中的表达存在差异。
本研究的结果表明，胎儿大脑和胎盘轴在调节外周器官的性别偏向代谢中起着重要作用。
