Researchers have found that female mice deprived of dietary zinc for a relatively short time before conception experienced fertility and pregnancy problems.

In the zinc-deficient group, the fetal side of the placenta was much less developed. Consistent with delayed development of the placenta, expression of key placental genes was sharply curtailed in mice with zinc-deficient diets. Collectively, the findings provide evidence for the importance of preconception zinc in promoting optimal fertility and embryo, fetal and placenta development, explained Francisco Diaz, assistant professor of reproductive biology. "The mineral zinc acts as a catalytic, structural and signaling factor in the regulation of a diverse array of cellular pathways involving hundreds of enzymes and proteins," he said. "Given these wide-ranging roles, it is not surprising that insufficient zinc during pregnancy causes developmental defects in many species. We have known that for a long time. "However, the role of zinc during the preconception period in promoting later development during pregnancy is not clearly understood." In the six-month study, which was published online in a recent edition of Biology of Reproduction, female mice were fed a control or a zinc-deficient diet for four to five days before ovulation.
Then, embryonic and/or placental development was evaluated on days three, six, 10, 12 and 16 of pregnancy. At each of those intervals, Xi Tian, recent Penn State doctoral student and now a postdoctoral scholar at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, measured and evaluated fetuses, examining them with light microscopy and magnetic resonance imaging. She was assisted by co-authors Thomas Neuberger, assistant professor of biomedical engineering in Penn State's Huck Institutes of Life Sciences, working with the Penn State's High-Field Magnetic Resonance Imaging Facility, and Kate Anthony, research technician in animal science.
Source-Eurekalert