Infant growth restriction is associated with distinct patterns of DNA methylation in human placentas

• DOI: 10.4161/epi.6.7.16079
• Publication Date: 2011-06-17T18:18:44Z
• Authors: Carolyn E. Banister; Devin C. Koestler; Matthew A. Maccani; James F. Padbury; E. Andres Houseman; Carmen J. Marsit
• Keywords: Intrauterine growth restriction; Genomic Imprinting; Fetal growth

The placenta acts not only as a conduit of nutrient and waste exchange between mother developing fetus, but also functions regulator the intrauterine environment. Recent work has identified changes in expression candidate genes, often through epigenetic alteration, which alter placenta's function impact fetal growth. In this study, we used Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation27 BeadChip array to examine genome-wide DNA methylation patterns 206 term human placentas. Semi-supervised recursively partitioned mixture modeling was implemented identify specific placental that could differentially classify growth restriction (IUGR) small for gestational age (SGA) placentas from appropriate (AGA) placentas, these associations were validated masked testing series samples. Our demonstrates are reliably significantly associated with infant serve proof principle status can marker environment, potentially play critical functional role development.