A tiny set of neurons deep inside the brain is fundamental to viable pregnancies in mice. These neurons are also present in human female brains and could provide clues about unexplained recurrent miscarriages and IVF difficulties.
Nirao Shah at Stanford University, California, and his colleagues discovered the neurons while looking for gene expression changes in different parts of the female mouse brain during pregnancy. They observed a small population of neurons that completely transformed.
The levels of gene expression in these neurons changed over 30-fold when mice became pregnant for the first time, converting them to a new class of neurons that functioned in a completely different way by mid-gestation. “This cell type is exclusive to pregnancy,” the researchers write.