Figure 4.

DNA methylation of CpG locus at OXTR gene promoter in human placental vessels. A, Bioinformatic analysis of the CpG islands of the OXTR gene from upstream −1 kb to downstream +1 kb region. Sequence analysis identified one CpG island in exon 1 that contains 22 CpG sites, located at positions +55 to +225 from the translation start site (TSS, defined as position 1) in the OXTR gene promoter. B, Represent the bisulphite conversion efficiency between NP and PE group. Bisulphite conversion efficiency was calculated by the number of transformed C to T divided by the number of C in each sample. C‐E, Represent the mean methylation status of the genomic regions in OXTR gene promoter. Each point represents mean methylation percentage in a genomic region of a sample. F, Expression analysis of OXTR gene and its correlation with methylation levels of 22 CpG sites. DNA methylation/mRNA correlation plots for OXTR gene identified by causal inference test. The y‐axis represents the relative expression level of OXTR gene which was detected with qRT‐PCR method. The x‐axis represents the relative mean methylation level of all the 22 CpG sites within OXTR gene. r: Pearson correlation coefficient. Error bars denote sem ***P < 0.001. N, number of participants