Whether the delivery process is smooth or not has a direct impact on fetal and maternal health. In modern pastures, batch production has become an important way to improve breeding efficiency. Among them, artificial control of maternal delivery time and reduction of delivery-related diseases (such as placental retention, etc.) are the key to reducereducing management costs and improveimproving reproductive efficiency. In recent years, Professor Zhou Xu's research group has carried out research on the problem of placental retention in dairy cow farming, screened out the important molecules that start delivery (patented), and developed the key technology to reduce placental retention in dairy cows (patented). And itIt has been popularized and applied in large-scale dairy farms, and the effect is remarkable.

  According to the previous research basis of our group and the current research progress on delivery and preterm delivery, this paper systematically expounds the molecular mechanism of delivery and preterm labor from different epigenetic perspectives, such as miRNA, LncRNA, DNA methylation and histone modification. It is suggested that the epigenetic modification of different tissues during pregnancy is closely related to the initiation of delivery. In normal delivery or preterm delivery, miRNA ismiRNAs are differentially expressed in different tissues, regulating theinflammatory response, hormone levels, uterine contraction and uterine remodeling; differential lncRNAlncRNAs mainly affectsaffect the inflammatory response; andDNA methylation is involved in the regulation of estrogen synthesis and release, inflammatory factor secretion and immunity. This paper systematically expounds the epigenetic changes and regulatory mechanisms of different tissues during pregnancy, which provides an important reference for elucidating the role of epigenetics in the initiation of delivery and preterm delivery.

  The article was published in BiologicalReviews, a Toptop journal of biology (IF:12.82). Professor Li Chunjin and doctoral student Cao Maosheng were the first authors, and Professor Zhou Xu was the correspondencecorresponding author.