Studies in SNAT2- (Vaughan et al., 2021) or SNAT4 (Matoba et al., 2019)-knockout mice specifically in trophoblasts have shown that these two transporters are crucial for placental and fetal growth, while reduced placental amino acid transfer precedes the onset of IUGR in rat (Pantham et al., 2016) and primate (Rosario et al., 2021) models of maternal protein restriction. Here, SLC38A2 is linked to fetal growth restriction.