The microbial community of Eutherian origin — ASN Events
  1. Schedule
  2. Poster Session A
  3. The microbial community of Eutherian origin

The microbial community of Eutherian origin (#209)

Leanne Ragonesi 1 , Associate Professor Flavia Huygens 1 , Professor Ken Beagley 1 , Dr Rohan Lourie 2 , Dr Ross Turner 3 , Professor Philip Hugenholtz 4 , Dr Elise Pelzer 1
  1. Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
  2. Mater Pathology, The Mater Hospital, Brisbane, Queensland
  3. The Wesley Hospital, Auchenflower, Brisbane, Queensland
  4. Australian Centre for Ecogenomics, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland

Recent research challenges the accepted dogma, “that the fetus develops in a sterile environment” as molecular sequencing techniques, reveal the presence of microbial DNA in placental tissue and amniotic fluid collected from term and preterm deliveries.

Furthermore, research investigating metabolic diseases has revealed a dysbiosis in the gastrointestinal microbial communities of obese individuals compared to lean individuals. It is unknown whether the presence of maternal obesity during pregnancy impacts on the maternal microbiota transferred to offspring. 

Objective: To characterize the placental microbiome in term placentae collected from obese women compared to the placental microbiome of healthy weight women.

Methods:Microbial DNA was extracted and purified as previously described. Illumina next-generation sequencing was used to characterize the placental microbiome from each cohort targeting variable regions in the 16srRNA gene.

Results: Preliminary data indicates a specific microbial community profile in placentae collected from obese women compared to healthy controls.  Both healthy weight women and obese women demonstrated a microbial community dominated by Gammaproteobacteria. However, the relative abundance of members of the Firmicutes and Betaproteobacteria phyla demonstrated an inverse correlation between the two groups. Placentae collected from obese pregnant women harboured increased Betaproteobacteria and decreased Firmicutes when compared to healthy weight women.

Conclusions: Further analysis is required to investigate the potential significance of this finding in the context of the relationship between maternal and neonatal obesity.

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