Events

Abstract: Growth and survival of the mammalian embryo within the uterine environment depends on the placenta, a highly complex vascularized organ comprised of both maternal and foetal tissues. The zinc finger transcriptional repressor Prdm1/Blimp1 is essential for specification of spiral artery trophoblast giant cells (SpA-TGCs) that invade and remodel maternal blood vessels. To learn more about functional contributions made by Blimp1+ cell lineages here we perform the first single-cell RNA-seq analysis of the placenta. To better understand the role of Blimp1 we performed microarray and ChIP-seq analysis of wild type and mutant differentiating trophoblast stem cells. Our experiments provide new insights into the functionally distinct cell types present at the maternal–foetal interface, advance our knowledge of dynamic gene expression patterns controlling placental morphogenesis and vascular mimicry, and highlight the functional contributions made by Blimp1 during trophoblast differentiation.

Biography: Andrew began his research career at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute studying post-transcriptional control of gene expression during C. elegans development. His postdoctoral work in Fiona Wardle’s lab at University of Cambridge and King’s College London focused on understanding transcriptional regulation of endoderm formation in zebrafish. His later postdoctoral work in Prof. Elizabeth Robertson’s lab at University of Oxford involved studying Prdm1/Blimp1-expressing cells in murine placenta and the role of Blimp1 in trophoblast differentiation. Andrew moved to the School of Life Sciences at University of Warwick in March 2017 to set up his own lab focusing on transcriptional control of both endoderm and trophoblast differentiation.