About this Research Topic

Background

Reproductive medicine not only helps to bring new life into the world, but its focus on issues such as birth control, sex education, and mental health is also equally important in creating balanced and sustainable societies. Preventing unwanted pregnancies not only reduces infant mortality in poverty but also relieves pressure on over-stretched social services while allowing millions of women around the world to build successful careers or pursue other personal ambitions before starting families.

Omics technology is the discipline that studies the events and interactions of cellular structures and processes from deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) to biological function in a complex and global way. Applying omics to clinical practice requires an understanding of human variation at multiple levels, including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics, as well as additional omics studies such as metagenomics, epigenomics, interactivity, and lipidomics. Omics are capable of analyzing all classes of biological compounds, epigenetic markers, genes, messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA), proteins, and metabolites.





The decline in the birth rate during the past decades and infertility in humans lead to an urgent need for fundamental investigation and knowledge of reproductive medicine. A fundamental understanding of precise molecular regulations in human reproduction requires investigation of the molecular networks, intercellular communications, and regulatory programs during gametogenesis and embryogenesis. The complex content of reproductive medicine leads to an urgent need for new diagnostic and therapeutic tools. Currently, the rapid development of high-throughput and omics technologies permitted novel discoveries and improvements in reproductive medicine. For example, single-cell RNA sequencing and transcriptomes analysis was used to identify cell types with novelty-revealed marker genes of adult zebrafish. Comparative transcriptomic analysis and weighted gene co-expression network analysis were also successfully used for finding unique aspects of gene expression of donkey oocyte development from germinal vesicle to metaphase, leading to a new understanding of ky regulators in donkey oocyte development. Besides, these high-throughput and omics technologies have accelerated the investigation of screening, diagnosis, and prevention of reproduction and pregnancy-related diseases. Omics technologies technology allows us to improve knowledge in this field and thus gain a broader understanding of complex biological systems, showing the major advantage of obtaining a large amount of information at a relatively low cost and effort.

This research topic welcomes articles on but is not limited to the current development of omics technology and its applications in reproductive medicine. Omics technologies include genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, lipidomics, epigenomics, epitranscriptomics, epiproteomics, and et al. Reproductive medicine addresses issues of infertility, reproductive system disease (including sexually transmitted diseases), sexual dysfunction, maternal-fetal biology, recurrent spontaneous miscarriage, recurrent implantation failure, embryology, infertility, andrology, reproductive endocrinology, reproductive immunology, fetal growth restriction, preeclampsia, assisted reproductive technologies and et al.

This research topic welcomes articles on, but are not limited to, the following topics:
• The advances of omics technology and applications in reproductive medicine.
• Diagnostic biomarkers identified by omics for reproductive diseases.
• Potential therapeutics suggested by omics in reproductive medicine.
• Reproductive medicine: infertility, reproductive system disease, maternal-fetal biology, recurrent spontaneous miscarriage, recurrent implantation failure, embryology, infertility, andrology, reproductive endocrinology, reproductive immunology, et al.
• Omics technology: genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, lipidomics, epigenomics, epitranscriptomics, epiproteomics and et al.

Keywords: Omics technologies, reproductive medicine, maternal-fetal biology, high-throughput technologies, assisted reproductive technologies, genomics

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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