A team of researchers from the University of Maryland School of Maryland’s Institute of Human Virology, a Center of Excellence of the Global Virus Network, published new findings that emphasize the crucial role of the urinary and genital tract microbiota in adverse pregnancy outcomes and genomic instability that originate in the womb during fetal development. The study, published on July 17 in PNAS, established a new link between genomic instability and a protein from Mycoplasma fermentans, a kind of bacterium that commonly colonizes the urogenital tract. This bacterial protein also reduced fertility in mother mice and resulted in more birth defects in their newborn pups.
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