Gene Expression of Four Targets In Situ of the First Trimester Maternal-fetoplacental Interface

Abstract EPAS1, FSTL3, IGFBP1, and SEMA3C were localized to determine whether expression is decidual, trophoblastic, or both in the human first trimester maternal-fetoplacental interface. Identified on global genome-wide microarray analysis of chorionic villus sampling tissues in preclinical preeclampsia, these targets were predicted to interact by bioinformatics pathways analysis. In situ hybridization (ISH) with mRNA of each gene was conducted in 10 cases of archived first trimester termination tissues. Randomly selected areas of cells by tissue type yielded the relative proportion of cells expressing mRNA signal in decidual and fetoplacental sites. Data were analyzed using Shapiro-Wilk and Kruskal-Wallis tests (p ≤ .05). The average gestational age was 10.2 weeks. Expression signal for each gene differed by cell type (p