Pregnancies with medical complications or diseases were excluded. The placental villi tissues were collected during the suction curettage procedure. The placental villi from first-trimester pregnancies were carefully dissected

free of attached placental Gefitinib or myometrial tissue as well as visible blood clots and then washed twice in 0.9% NaCl as soon as the embryonic tissues were removed from the uterus. Samples were stored at −80°C and later processed to extract tissue protein. Biopsies were taken from the placental villi, and small blocks of tissue were obtained by cutting longitudinal sections of 3–5 mm maximum thickness. The blocks were immersed immediately for 2 hr in phosphate-buffered 2.5% gluteraldehyde. After overnight washing in a 0.1 m sodium phosphate buffer, the tissue blocks were post-fixed in 1% OsO4 in a 0.1 m phosphate buffer (pH 7.4) for 1 hr and stained with 1% uranyl acetate. Afterwards, the tissue blocks were dehydrated and flat-embedded in Durcupan (Fluka Chemic AG, Sweden). For electron microscopy (EM), ultrathin sections (60–70 nm) were stained with lead citrate, examined at 3700× and LY2157299 12500× magnification and photographed using a Zeiss 109 electron microscope (Carl Zeiss, Oberkochen, Germany). HTR-8/SVneo and HPT-8 cells were grown in Dulbecco’s modified Eagle’s medium/Ham’s F-12 medium supplemented

with 1% non-essential amino acids, 2 mm glutamine and 10% heat-inactivated foetal bovine serum in a 37°C incubator with 5% CO2. Complementary DNA (cDNA) to gC1qR was constructed in-frame using the BamHI/EcoRI sites of the pcDNA 3.1 vector. The resulting

gC1qR vector was then transfected into HTR-8/SVneo and HPT-8 cells according to the vendor’s protocol. Briefly, 500 pmol of gC1qR vector and 10 μL of Lipofectamine 2000 were diluted in 750 μL of OptiMEM (Life Technologies). After pre-incubation for 45 min at 37°C, the solutions were mixed and incubated for an additional 15 min at room temperature. The Lipofectamine 2000/gC1qR vector mixture was subsequently overlaid onto the cells and incubated for 2 hr. Finally, 1 mL of growth medium (20% FCS) per well was added for further cultivation of the cells. Reporter gene activities were normalized to total protein levels, and all of the results represent the average of triplicate experiments. We designed an siRNA to target the 408–426 nucleotide portion of human gC1qR mRNA; the forward sequence cAMP was 5′-AAC AAC AGC AUC CCA CCA ACA UU-3′. Using pGenesil-1 as the vector backbone, a gC1qR siRNA-expressing plasmid was constructed. Near the 5′ end of the two oligonucleotides were BamHI and HindIII restriction site overhangs; a 6-nucleotide poly-T tract recognized as an RNA pol III termination signal was located at the 3′ end of the siRNA template. The siRNA was synthesized, annealed and ligated into the BamHI and HindIII restriction sites of the pGenesil-1 expression vector. A vector containing siRNA for an unrelated gene was used as a negative control.