Sex-Stratified Transcriptomic Analysis of Cord-Blood Endothelial Colony-Forming Cells from Pregnancies Complicated by Gestational Diabetes.
4 affiliations
- 1Department of Biomedical Sciences, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, USA.
- 2School of Medicine, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
- 3Department of Biology, Virginia State University, Petersburgh, VA, USA.
- 4Department of Medical Microbiology and Parasitology, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomosho, Nigeria.
Abstract
Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) and maternal obesity are intrauterine metabolic exposures associated with altered fetal development and increased cardiovascular risk later in life. Increasing evidence suggests that fetal responses to these exposures are sex-dependent; however, the regulatory mechanisms underlying sex-specific vascular programming remain poorly understood. Using purified neonatal endothelial colony-forming cells (ECFCs), a progenitor population of fetal vasculature, we performed a sex-stratified transcriptomic analysis of pregnant mothers classified as lean, overweight, or GDM. Differential expression, pathway enrichment, transcription factor activity inference, kinase network reconstruction, and connectivity mapping were integrated to characterize sex-dependent regulatory responses to maternal metabolic dysfunction. Male and female ECFCs exhibited markedly divergent transcriptomic responses to GDM. Correlation between male and female fold-change estimates was negligible (r = -0.01), and the female-specific signal was not detectable when sex was modeled as a covariate rather than as a stratifying variable. Female GDM-exposed ECFCs demonstrated coordinated enrichment of cell-cycle- and DNA replication-associated pathways together with recurrent prioritization of E2F-family regulators across multiple analytical approaches. In contrast, the male response was comparatively limited and was associated with distinct transcriptional changes, including AKT3-associated pathways. Notably, E2F1 transcript abundance remained relatively stable despite coordinated expression changes among E2F-associated target genes. Independent endothelial transcriptomic datasets, drawn from previously published findings rather than independent reanalysis, provided complementary biological context rather than direct validation, consistent with enrichment of E2F-associated programs in GDM-exposed ECFCs and greater transcriptional responsiveness in female endothelial cells reported elsewhere. These findings indicate that fetal sex is a major determinant of the endothelial progenitor response to maternal metabolic dysfunction and that biologically relevant signals may be obscured in pooled analyses. Our results support the existence of sex-dependent regulatory programs associated with fetal vascular responses to GDM and identify an E2F1-associated regulatory framework as a candidate mechanism warranting further investigation.
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BibTeX
@article{adegbaju2026sexstratified,
title = {{Sex-Stratified Transcriptomic Analysis of Cord-Blood Endothelial Colony-Forming Cells from Pregnancies Complicated by Gestational Diabetes.}},
author = {Muyiwa S Adegbaju and Oluseyi Babayeju and Olanrewaju B Morenikeji and Olusola Ojurongbe and Bolaji N Thomas},
journal = {Computational and structural biotechnology journal},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.34133/csbj.0252},
url = {https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42996783},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Sex-Stratified Transcriptomic Analysis of Cord-Blood Endothelial Colony-Forming Cells from Pregnancies Complicated by Gestational Diabetes.
AU - Muyiwa S Adegbaju
AU - Oluseyi Babayeju
AU - Olanrewaju B Morenikeji
AU - Olusola Ojurongbe
AU - Bolaji N Thomas
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/06
JO - Computational and structural biotechnology journal
DO - 10.34133/csbj.0252
UR - https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42996783
AB - Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) and maternal obesity are intrauterine metabolic exposures associated with altered fetal development and increased cardiovascular risk later in life. Increasing evidence suggests that fetal responses to these exposures are sex-dependent; however, the regulatory mechanisms underlying sex-specific vascular programming remain poorly understood. Using purified neonatal endothelial colony-forming cells (ECFCs), a progenitor population of fetal vasculature, we performed a sex-stratified transcriptomic analysis of pregnant mothers classified as lean, overweight, or GDM. Differential expression, pathway enrichment, transcription factor activity inference, kinase network reconstruction, and connectivity mapping were integrated to characterize sex-dependent regulatory responses to maternal metabolic dysfunction. Male and female ECFCs exhibited markedly divergent transcriptomic responses to GDM. Correlation between male and female fold-change estimates was negligible (r = -0.01), and the female-specific signal was not detectable when sex was modeled as a covariate rather than as a stratifying variable. Female GDM-exposed ECFCs demonstrated coordinated enrichment of cell-cycle- and DNA replication-associated pathways together with recurrent prioritization of E2F-family regulators across multiple analytical approaches. In contrast, the male response was comparatively limited and was associated with distinct transcriptional changes, including AKT3-associated pathways. Notably, E2F1 transcript abundance remained relatively stable despite coordinated expression changes among E2F-associated target genes. Independent endothelial transcriptomic datasets, drawn from previously published findings rather than independent reanalysis, provided complementary biological context rather than direct validation, consistent with enrichment of E2F-associated programs in GDM-exposed ECFCs and greater transcriptional responsiveness in female endothelial cells reported elsewhere. These findings indicate that fetal sex is a major determinant of the endothelial progenitor response to maternal metabolic dysfunction and that biologically relevant signals may be obscured in pooled analyses. Our results support the existence of sex-dependent regulatory programs associated with fetal vascular responses to GDM and identify an E2F1-associated regulatory framework as a candidate mechanism warranting further investigation.
SN - 2001-0370
ER -