“Deregulated biological functions identified in our study offer biological plausibility for the results of tobacco cigarette smoking on reproductive outcomes and can assist policy makers execute public health projects to help stop cigarette smoking,” Bustamante said.Despite anti-tobacco campaigns, maternal smoking during pregnancy is still common. The mechanisms underlying these results– how, precisely, maternal smoking results in low birth weight, for example– are not well understood.Bustamante and her colleagues thought that maternal cigarette smoking affects the placenta, an important organ for fetal advancement. Bustamante would have liked to examine the placenta epigenome in its totality, she and her team settled on DNA methylation as it is quite stable and does not need fresh samples, which can be difficult to obtain.By analyzing associations in between maternal cigarette smoking throughout pregnancy and placental DNA methylation patterns, and methylation patterns and birth outcomes of 1,700 anticipating mothers in the Pregnancy and Childhood Epigenetics consortium, Bustamante and her colleagues identified more than 400 sites across the placental epigenome where methylation levels associated with maternal smoking cigarettes throughout pregnancy.
“Deregulated biological functions identified in our research study supply biological plausibility for the results of tobacco smoking on reproductive outcomes and can help policy makers implement public health projects to assist stop smoking cigarettes,” Bustamante said.Despite anti-tobacco projects, maternal smoking cigarettes during pregnancy is still common. The systems underlying these effects– how, precisely, maternal cigarette smoking results in low birth weight, for example– are not well understood.Bustamante and her colleagues presumed that maternal smoking impacts the placenta, an essential organ for fetal development. Bustamante would have liked to examine the placenta epigenome in its entirety, she and her team settled on DNA methylation as it is rather stable and does not need fresh samples, which can be difficult to obtain.By analyzing associations between maternal smoking cigarettes during pregnancy and placental DNA methylation patterns, and methylation patterns and birth outcomes of 1,700 expecting mothers in the Pregnancy and Childhood Epigenetics consortium, Bustamante and her coworkers identified more than 400 websites throughout the placental epigenome where methylation levels associated with maternal smoking throughout pregnancy. She and her associates hope to address this question and others, such as whether smoking impacts different types of cells in the placenta in the exact same method, in future research.But being able to connect particular biological and immune pathways to the epigenetic results of maternal smoking cigarettes is amazing, according to Marina Sirota, a computational biologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not included in the research.