NANCHANG, March 30 (Xinhua) -- A group of Chinese scientists has leveraged the litter-bearing trait of pigs to uncover key cell types and molecular mechanisms underlying fetal growth restriction and maternal cardiac energy adaptation during pregnancy, according to a research article recently published in the journal Science.
As a vital sector for China's livelihood, the pig industry supplies 60 percent of the country's meat consumption.
Ensuring the reproductive health of breeding sows and reducing the number of intrauterine growth restricted piglets thus has a direct effect on the industry's quality and efficiency.
The researchers from Jiangxi Agricultural University, east China's Jiangxi Province, designed and created an "all-from-one" family based single-cell atlas from one pregnant sow and her fetal male offspring, sampling 119 and 115 tissues, respectively, as well as other members of the same pig family, such as the fathers and half-siblings.
This "all-from-one" design enabled accurate comparisons of cell types, transcription factors and molecular pathways without confounding caused by differences in genetics, epigenetics, age and environmental exposures.
The authors further deciphered mechanisms of pregnancy-induced cardiovascular changes in mothers and pathological changes involved in intrauterine growth restriction piglets.
In response to the approximately 5 to 20 percent rate of intrauterine growth restricted piglets, as well as the 5 to 10 percent incidence of fetal growth restriction in human pregnancies, the newly elucidated mechanisms of fetal growth restriction and cardiac energy adaptation in pregnant sows have provided innovative insights into addressing the issue of over 35 million growth-restricted piglets born annually in China and to improving the reproductive health of more than 30 million sows, said Zhao Shuhong, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
This study is not only of great significance for precision molecular design breeding in the pig breeding industry but also offers irreplaceable reference value for research in the related human fetal growth restriction and pregnancy fields, noted Zhou Qi, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. ■
