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Early embryonic development, implantation and maintenance of a pregnancy are critically dependent on an intact embryo‐maternal communication. So far, only few signals involved in this dialogue have been identified. In bovine and other ruminants, interferon tau is the predominant embryonic pregnancy recognition signal, exhibiting antiluteolytic activity. However, this is just one aspect of the complex process of embryo‐maternal signalling, and a number of other systems are more likely to be involved. To gain a more comprehensive understanding of these important mechanisms, integrated projects involving specialists in embryology, reproductive biotechnology and functional genome research are necessary to perform a systematic analysis of interactions between pre‐implantation stage embryos and oviduct or uterine epithelial cells, respectively. State‐of‐the‐art transcriptomic and proteomic …