Comparison of mouse placental labyrinth and human villus tree

An important question for the use of the mouse as a model for studying human disease is the degree of functional conservation of genetic control pathways from human to mouse. The human placenta and mouse placenta show structural similarities but there has been no systematic attempt to assess their molecular similarities or differences. We built a comprehensive database of protein and microarray data for the highly vascular exchange region micro-dissected from the human and mouse placenta near-term. Abnormalities in this region are associated with two of the most common and serious complications of human pregnancy, maternal preeclampsia (PE) and fetal intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR), each disorder affecting ~5% of all pregnancies. To compare the gene expression patterns in the vascular exchange regions of the human (villus tree) and mouse (labyrinth) placenta. Keywords: comparison Mouse labyrinth tissue was micro-dissected form naturally mated crosses of C57Bl/6J mice. Placentas were individually dissected on embryonic day 17.5. From each litter ¼ of the tissue were set aside for RNA extraction and microarray analysis and ¾ for cellular fractionation and proteomic analysis, as recently described (Kislinger et al., 2006). Human villous trees were dissected from term normal placenta delivered by cesarean section from a term pregnancy (~ 38 weeks). Tissue was divided for organellar fractionation and RNA extraction.