On Jan. 10, 2024, an National Institutes of Health (NIH) supported study announced an n atlas revealing the activity of individual placental cells during childbirth offers insight on what happens at the maternal-fetal interface during term labor. The atlas provides a single-cell analysis of the human placenta and its surrounding membranes and is the first to use this method to understand the communication that occurs between maternal and fetal cells during the process of labor.

The study team created the placental atlas by using single-cell RNA sequencing (also called single-cell transcriptomics), which examines the activity and signaling patterns of individual cells. The atlas, which is based on samples from 42 term pregnancies, describes changes in gene expression patterns among the different cell types in the placenta and its surrounding membranes, which include both maternal and fetal-derived cells.