Abstract
A sexually dimorphic role of miRNAs in placental development has never been reported. Here, we show that ablation of the miR-465 cluster caused selective degeneration of female conceptuses as early as embryonic day (E)8.5, leading to a male-biased sex ratio (60% males) among miR-465 KO mice. Given that the miR-465 cluster miRNAs were predominantly expressed in the extraembryonic tissue and ablation of these miRNAs led to dysregulation of numerous critical placental genes, our data strongly suggest the miR-465 cluster is required for full developmental potential of the female, but not the male, extraembryonic tissue/placenta.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Abbreviations
- WT
- wild-type
- KO
- knockout
- M
- male
- F
- female
- Em
- embryo
- ExE
- extraembryonic tissue
- Pl
- placenta
- Ch
- chorion
- EPC
- ectoplacental core
- Al
- allantois
- De
- decidua
- ISH
- in situ hybridization
- NS
- not significant
- N
- normal-looking conceptuses
- D
- delayed/degenerating/degenerated conceptuses
- DEGs
- differentially expressed genes
- PCA
- principal component analyses
- GO
- Gene ontology
- XCI
- X chromosome inactivation
- TPM
- Transcript per million reads
Copyright
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission.
Posted January 17, 2021.
