Fig. 1: Experimental design and RNA-seq overview.

A Experimental design. At gestational day 17, mice were intratracheally instilled with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) or vehicle (H₂0, denoted Ctrl). At set timepoints after instillation, mice (N = 7–9 for each group/timepoint) were sacrificed and organs were dissected (gray box) from mothers and one female fetus and used for subsequent analyses, including RNA-seq (B). Plasma samples were also collected from mothers at all timepoints. Artwork adapted from bioicons (https://bioicons.com/, CC 0 license). B Overview of RNA-seq results. Rows show genes that changed expression ≥2-fold in at least one timepoint and tissue. Columns show time after LPS or Ctrl instillation, sorted first by tissue and then by time. Colors indicate LPS vs. Ctrl gene expression log₂ fold change (log₂FC), for respective timepoint and tissue. Callouts show major gene ontology term enrichments for subclusters dominated by maternal lung and liver. C Expression change of TLR4 pathway genes. Heatmap organized as in (B), but uses placenta+decidua samples for differential expression (DE) analysis and shows expression change (placenta+decidua log₂FC, indicated by color) and significance (−log₁₀ FDR, indicated by dot size). D Comparison of placental gene expression change following intratracheal instillation vs. intrauterine LPS injection. X-axis shows placental gene LPS vs. Ctrl 6 h gene expression log₂FC after intrauterine LPS injection (data from ref. ³⁶). The Y-axis shows placenta+decidua LPS vs. Ctrl gene expression log₂FC 5 h after intratracheal LPS instillation (our data). Hexagon colors indicate the number of genes. Callouts show DE genes, colored by whether the gene was DE in one or both experiments. The dotted line indicates X = Y: blue line indicates the observed correlation with 95% gray confidence interval. E Comparison of maternal lung gene expression change following intratracheal LPS instillation vs. placental gene expression following intrauterine LPS injection. Organized as in D, but Y-axis shows maternal lung LPS vs. Ctrl gene expression log₂FC 5 h after intratracheal LPS instillation (our data). Source data in fig1_response_matrix_list.rds, fig1_limma_results_no_maternal_contrasts.csv and fig1_lien_fold_change_summary.rds.