Independent education resourceInformation here does not replace care from a qualified health professional.
Peptide Therapy GuideClear peptide education

Educational guide

Study reveals how gestational diabetes disrupts the placenta at the molecular level

Gestational diabetes can cause a multitude of complications in the offspring, but to date, the reasons are incompletely understood. A new study, exploring a foundational step in the process of building proteins from genetic material, called splicing, reveals t

Written by Peptide Therapy Guide Editorial Team
For education only

This guide cannot diagnose a condition or recommend a personal treatment plan. Discuss medical questions with a qualified professional.

Gestational diabetes can cause a multitude of complications in the offspring, but to date, the reasons are incompletely understood. A new study, exploring a foundational step in the process of building proteins from genetic material, called splicing, reveals that this process is affected, altering how the placenta reads and processes genetic instructions. Researchers found that in pregnancies affected by gestational diabetes, hundreds of genetic messages are assembled incorrectly, potentially disrupting how the placenta functions. They identified a key protein, SRSF10, that appears to contribute to the disrupted process. When this protein was blocked in lab cells, the same errors seen in gestational diabetes appeared, suggesting that targeting SRSF10 could one day help mitigate the deleterious effects of gestational diabetes on the offspring.

New study uncovers an unknown mechanism linking gestational diabetes to pregnancy complications. Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), a form of diabetes that develops during pregnancy, has an increasing prevalence worldwide. GDM causes a disrupted metabolic environment for the fetus, including elevated blood glucose levels from the mother. This may result in immediate complications for the newborns, such as being born too large or too small for gestational age, more caesarean deliveries, pre-term deliveries, and more. . It also has long-lasting effects on the offspring, with higher risks for obesity and diabetes later in life.

A new study led by Prof. Maayan Salton from the Faculty of Medicine at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Dr. Tal Schiller from the Faculty of Medicine at Hebrew University, Kaplan Medical Center, and Wolfson Medical Center at Tel Aviv University, together with PhD students Eden Engal and Adi Gershon, reveals that gestational diabetes alters the placenta at the molecular level in ways never seen before.

Published in Diabetes, a leading journal in the field, the study found that GDM changes how the placenta processes its genetic messages. Using advanced RNA sequencing data from both European and Chinese pregnancy cohorts, the team discovered hundreds of alterations in how RNA molecules are "spliced", the step that determines which protein instructions are ultimately produced. These changes were strongly linked to genes involved in metabolism and diabetes-related pathways.

A key finding centered on SRSF10, a protein that helps control RNA splicing. When researchers reduced the activity of SRSF10 in placental cells, the same molecular disruptions seen in GDM appeared. This suggests that SRSF10 may be a master regulator of placental function, and potentially a new therapeutic target for preventing pregnancy complications.

"By understanding how gestational diabetes disrupts the placenta at the molecular level, we can begin to imagine new ways to protect the offspring" said Prof. Salton. "Our findings bring us a step closer to that goal," added Dr. Schiller. "By pinpointing the specific molecular players involved, like the SRSF10 protein, we can start thinking about how to translate this knowledge into real-world strategies to improve pregnancy outcomes."

Gestational diabetes is typically managed through diet, exercise, and insulin, but its underlying biology has remained poorly understood. This research sheds light on how the metabolic changes observed in GDM can alter how genes are processed, opening new avenues for intervention.

Engal, E., et al. (2025). Gestational Diabetes Mellitus Alters Placental Precursor mRNA Splicing. Diabetes. doi: doi.org/10.2337/db25-0333. https://diabetesjournals.org/diabetes/article-abstract/doi/10.2337/db25-0333/163844/Gestational-Diabetes-Mellitus-Alters-Placental

Connected reading

Helpful context for this guide

Source-derived material selected through this article’s indexed topics.

Related questions

01What comes next?

We are now testing the drug in patients with earlier-stage pancreatic cancer, prescribing it while their tumors are still operable and before their cancer spreads.

Source: www.news-medical.net ↗
02How long does it take for vitamins to work?

Biologically, vitamins are absorbed within hours and have instant metabolic effects, such as antioxidants that protect cells or compounds that are building blocks for making hormones. But, many factors impact their efficiency and could keep your body from fully absorbing them. Absorption and effects depend on each individual and what combination of vitamins they take. Gender, age, digestive health, medical conditions, and diet all play a role. One helpful practice to detect deficiencies is to look for the symptoms deficiencies create. Then, look for improvement in your symptoms with supplement intake. You are unlikely to see or feel changes if you do not lack nutrients. If you are chronically tired or see signs of unhealthy nails, hair, or skin, supplements may help as these are indicators that you are lacking nutrients in your diet. If you are unsure, your doctor can order tests to check for deficiencies in your blood.

Source: www.medicinenet.com ↗
03From Spirulina to Seaweed: How are different types of algae integral to human diets?

Algae are photosynthetic aquatic creatures that grow through the consumption of nutrients, light, and carbon dioxide. They are a diverse group of creatures that include tiny single-celled algae and enormous kelp, as well as seaweed 1. Numerous prokaryotic and eukaryotic algae species are desirable food sources for humans due to their inherent qualities 2,3. Human intake of macroalgae such as seaweed and microalgae like phytoplankton dates back many years. Multicellular macroscopic aquatic plants, or macroalgae, are classified into three taxa: Phaeophyceae, or brown algae, Rhodophyta or red algae, and Chlorophyta or green algae. Microalgae, the unicellular counterpart of macroalgae, are categorized in a broader framework that includes prokaryotic cyanobacteria (blue-green algae), Euglenophyta, and Chlorophyta, which are genetically distinct from one another. The ancient populations of Chad and the Aztec culture were already familiar with the cyanobacteria spirulina, which is currently advertised as a superfood in the West 4. In Burma, Vietnam, and India, other cyanobacteria/microalgae, like Spirogyra and Oedogonium, were eaten as food or as a supplement 4. Seaweed is a staple of daily meals in many Asian and Pacific civilizations, including Korea, Japan, and Indonesia, as well as Hawaii and New Zealand 5.

Source: www.news-medical.net ↗
04What’s your vision for BenevolentBio?

I want us to disrupt the drug discovery and development process and to look at each place on the drug discovery and development pipeline, so that we can be much better at getting the right target, much quicker at getting the right compound and much more confident that those compounds have the right characteristics which mean they will be safe and well tolerated. Then we can go to the right patient population with the right dose, so we would have a much leaner, more successful process and be able to demonstrate the value of our AI technology.

Source: www.news-medical.net ↗
05With graph neural networks, foundation models, and diffusion models transforming the field, what can we predict reliably today that was difficult a decade ago and are there still any blind spots?

One major example is protein structure. Methods such as AlphaFold and Boltz-2 have transformed how we generate 3D structural data. Accurate protein structure prediction has been a decades-old challenge, and while there is still work to do on underrepresented protein classes, these models have opened an extraordinary pathway. We have also seen progress in multi-output models. Just over a decade ago (circa 2013), toxicology and property prediction models often focused on one endpoint at a time. Now, multi-output models, especially from methods such as graph neural networks (GNNs) and other deep learning methods, can predict multiple endpoints simultaneously. This allows for transfer learning between related properties. That creates opportunities across ADMET (absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion, and toxicity) prediction and toxicology. Another exciting area is machine learning potentials. Molecular simulations traditionally rely on fixed mathematical functions to describe molecular interactions, but neural potentials can now replace or augment those functions. They can, in many cases, provide highly accurate simulations and structures at lower computational cost than quantum chemistry. However, its not just down to model architectures. The biggest blind spot behind all of these advances remains careful data curation, annotation, and collection. Open databases for example ChEMBL, PubChem and Chemspider together with data initiatives such as OpenADEMT and OpenBind to name but a few are making notable progress here. We still see some data for example on formulation chemistry often receiving less attention. Its is not just about data scale, but quality that is critical here to. Accessible high quality data sets are the fuel of AI methods. Architecture matters, but high-quality, accessible and abundant data is also absolutely critical.

Source: www.news-medical.net ↗
P

About the author

Peptide Therapy Guide Editorial Team

Editorial team for Peptide Therapy Guide.

View all articles →