Whole Transcriptome Analysis of Trophoblasts under Hypoxia

Introduction: A physiological hypoxia environment exists at maternal-fetal interface during early pregnancy. In addition, there is a pathological hypoxic microenvironment in patients with preeclampsia. Therefore, investi-gating the hypoxic adaptation and the effects of hypoxia on trophoblasts transcriptome is helpful to better un-derstand the function and regulatory mechanism of trophoblasts at the maternal-fetal interface. Methods: Trophoblast cell line HTR-8/SVneo was cultured under normoxia and hypoxia for 24 h, the full tran-scriptome was analyzed via RNA-Seq. GO and KEGG enrichment were performed on differentially expressed mRNA, adjacent genes of differentially expressed lncRNA, host genes of differentially expressed circRNA and target genes of differential expressed miRNA. Results: The results showed that hypoxia differentially regulated 373 mRNAs, 334 lncRNAs, 71 circRNAs and 33 miRNAs. GO and KEGG enrichment showed that hypoxia negatively regulated TLR3 and PI3K-Akt signaling pathways. Consistently, we found hypoxia significantly inhibited TLR3 agonist-induced cytokines expression and the phosphorylation of Akt and mTOR. Discussion: Our study obtained the full transcriptome data and potential regulatory network of trophoblasts under hypoxia, providing supportive data for revealing the function of trophoblasts.