Screening for unknown factors of reproductive and developmental abnormalities from the viewpoint of epigenetic and/or genetic fragility.

2018 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 17K19535
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Research (Exploratory)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Biomedical structure and function and related fields
• Research Institution: National Center for Child Health and Development
• Principal Investigator: HATA KENCHIRO 国立研究開発法人国立成育医療研究センター, 周産期病態研究部, 部長 (60360335)
• Project Period (FY): 2017-06-30 – 2019-03-31
• Keywords: エピジェネティクス / 発生異常

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Because of the diversity of the epigenome as well as the genome, a large number of pathologically unclear epigenetic variants can be found by ordinal analysis. In fact, we compared the DNA methylation of villous tissue in 24 cases who received assisted reproduction (treatment action including embryo manipulation) and 12 cases of spontaneous abortion, but no statistic differences could be detected. Therefore, the outlier test of DNA methylation was performed based on the method we previously reported (Kawai T, SciRep 2015), the abortion group after assisted reproduction had many outliers (ie, epigenetic fragments were observed). At present, detailed analysis of the features of DNA sequences that exhibited outliers is ongoing.

Free Research Field

エピジェネティクス

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

現在、不妊症（妊娠に至らないこと）や不育症（途中で流産してしまうこと）に悩むカップルは非常に多く、その一方でおよそ半数は原因がわかっていません。本研究は、「エピゲノム」という遺伝子の制御機構（ヒトが育っていくごく初期や胎盤（赤ちゃんに栄養を供給する臓器）の機能に影響を与えるらしいことがわかりつつあるが、実際に不妊症や不育症にどの程度かかわっているのかがよくわかっていない機構）に着目し、実際の不育症患者さんでその様子を調べました。その結果、我々が開発した「乱れ具合」を検知する手法で、不育症の患者さんでは「エピゲノム」が乱れている可能性が見つかり、現在更に詳しい解析を進めています。