This week we discuss placental inflammation and heart development with postdoc Eleanor Jayne Ward and PI Suchita Nadkarni (@SciSuchita) from Queen Mary, University of London. In this preprint, the authors show that during embryonic heart development, neutrophils (innate immune cells) can sometimes cause placental inflammation. This inflammation leads to a loss of barrier function. In turn, this allows maternal monocytes (innate immune cells that develop into macrophages) to migrate into the embryonic heart. These monocytes alter the tissue resident embryonic macrophages and damage cardiac tissue. This cardiac damage continues postnatally. We discuss this and how limiting placental inflammation was enough to promote normal cardiac development. We also talk about the precarity of postdocs and why making research/postdoc a recognised profession would be an important step forward. Read the full preprint on bioRxiv https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.10.482611v1.full Visit the Nadkarni lab website https://www.qmul.ac.uk/whri/people/academic-staff/items/nadkarnisuchita.html Read more about the reasons scientists preprint https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/833400v1 This episode was hosted by Jonny Coates, produced by Emma Wilson and edited by John D Howard. If you enjoyed this show then hit the subscribe button and leave a review (on Apple Podcasts or Spotify). If you love what we are trying to do then buy us a coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/preprints! Any contribution is greatly appreciated. For the latest podcast news and updates follow us on Twitter @MotionPod or visit our website; www.preprintsinmotion.com. Produced by JEmJ Productions (find us on Twitter: Jonny @JACoates, Emma @ELWilson92, John @JohnDHoward8) and generously supported by ASAPbio (https://asapbio.org | @asapbio_).