The University of Sheffield (Great Britain) is established as one of the best-regarded universities in the world, consistently positioned in the top 75 in the World University Rankings, with an annual turnover of £400m. In regards to this project, SU has an excellent position in reproductive and developmental medicine research and networking within Europe and the world. Both recent European wide Cost Actions in this field i.e., GEMINI (FA0702, http://www.cost-gemini.eu/) and Epiconcept (FA1201, http://epiconcept.group.shef.ac.uk/) have been initiated and managed by SU. Recent developments in understanding of innate immune responses during the periconception period as well as deciphering the epigenetics, genomics and proteomic interactions taking place during the periconception period has been either discovered by researchers based in SU or has been reported in collaboration with SU researchers. You can find additional information http://fazelilab.group.shef.ac.uk/

 

Description and main tasks  
Fazeli’s Research group within Academic Unit of Reproductive and Developmental Medicine has a history of over a decade productive research on maternal communication with gametes and embryo. Fazeli’s group has defined the importance of innate immune system in successful establishment of this communication. The group has a wide range of experience at the advance levels of application of genomics, epigenomics and proteomics technologies to understand maternal communication with gametes and embryo. Their model systems has ranged from Human to pig, cattle, sheep, fly (Dorosophila) and different families of fish ranging from Guppies to Sea horses. The group for the first time has coined the concept of early communication between gametes and the maternal tract. They have extended this concept to computational modelling exercises allowing prediction of maternal communications with gametes and embryo outcomes. Recently with the advances of epigenetic understanding of periconception environment, Fazeli’s group is leading an EU COST Action program (FA1201) “Epiconcept”, involving around 30 different EU member states to understand how periconception environment can affect epigenomic profile of the offspring affecting its health and development in the adulthood.