Project description:The early (primordial), middle and last stage ovarian follicles gestate important functionally changes during the whole growth phase. The primordial follicles establish the resting pool and keep silent until initiated growth. The middle stage follicles are to be destined for dominance or atresia. And the last stage fllicles develop till ovulation.We used microarrays to detail the global programme of gene expression underlying cellularisation and identified distinct classes of up-regulated genes during this process. Gene expression profiles of ovarian follicles during their growth phase were revealed in genome wide. Experiment Overall Design: We sought to obtain general expression profiles of ovarian follicles during their growth phase. Ovarian follicles in successive developmental stages were isolated from ovaries of prepubertal gilts for RNA extraction and hybridization on Affymetrix microarrays. To that end, we isolated follicles according to morphological criteria and diameter sizes at three time-points: primordial follicles (P), middle stage follicleS (M) and the last stage follicles (L).
Project description:The early (primordial), middle and last stage ovarian follicles gestate important functionally changes during the whole growth phase. The primordial follicles establish the resting pool and keep silent until initiated growth. The middle stage follicles are to be destined for dominance or atresia. And the last stage fllicles develop till ovulation.We used microarrays to detail the global programme of gene expression underlying cellularisation and identified distinct classes of up-regulated genes during this process. Gene expression profiles of ovarian follicles during their growth phase were revealed in genome wide. Keywords: time course
Project description:SAGE analysis of fully grown ovarian follicles has been carried out to supply a resource for identification of important molecules involved in vertebrate oogenesis and in early stages of embryonic development. Keywords: SAGE About 250 full-grown ovarian follicles were obtained after gentle squeezing the abdomen of five mature zebrafish females.
Project description:Previous studies have suggested that adamts9 (a disintegrin and metalloprotease with thrombospondin type-1 motifs, member 9), an extracellular matrix (ECM) metalloprotease, participates in primordial germ cell (PGC) migration and necessary for female fertility. In this study, we found that adamts9 knockout (KO) led to reduced body size, and female to male sex conversion in adult mature zebrafish prior to or after 90 days post fertilization (dpf); however, primary sex determination was not affected in early juveniles of adamts9 KO at 35 dpf. Overfeeding and lowering the rearing density rescued growth defects in female adamts9 KO fish but did not rescue defects in ovarian development in adamts9 KO. Delayed PGC proliferation, significantly reduced number and size of Stage IB follicles (equivalent to primary follicle) in early juveniles of adamts9 KO, and arrested development at Stage IB follicles in mid- or late-juveniles of adamts9 KO are likely causes of female infertility and sex conversion. Via RNAseq, we found significant enrichment of differentially expressed genes involved in ECM organization during sexual maturation in ovaries of wildtype fish; and significant dysregulation of these genes in adamts9 KO ovaries. RNAseq analysis also showed enrichment of inflammatory transcriptomic signatures in adult ovaries of these adamts9 KO. Taken together, our results indicate that adamts9 is critical for development of primary ovarian follicles and maintenance of female sex in zebrafish, and loss of adamts9 in zebrafish leads to ovarian follicle arrest, female infertility, and sex conversion in late juveniles and mature adults.
Project description:SAGE analysis of fully grown ovarian follicles has been carried out to supply a resource for identification of important molecules involved in vertebrate oogenesis and in early stages of embryonic development. Keywords: SAGE
Project description:Follicles of polycystic ovaries (PCO) often become arrested in early antral stages at around 3 to 11 mm in diameter. The condition disturbs dominant follicle selection and may result in altered ovulation and anovulation. During the growth and development of human follicles, the follicular fluid (FF) constitutes the avascular microenvironment in which the oocyte develops and acts as a vehicle for hormone signaling between cues from circulation and follicular cells. Previous proteomics studies performed on FF from women with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) have revealed information on the protein changes associated with the pathophysiology of this disorder. However, these studies have been conducted on FF samples obtained in connection with oocyte pick-up during ovarian stimulation right at the time of ovulation and are limited to follicular conditions during the follicular phase of the menstrual cycle. This study aimed to detect proteomic alterations in FF from human small antral follicles (hSAF) obtained from women with PCO as compared to normal women.
Project description:MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small noncoding RNAs that regulate gene expression primarily at the post-transcriptional levels and thereby play important roles in regulating many physiological and developmental processes. Oocyte maturation in fish is induced by hormones produced from the hypothalamus, pituitary, and ovary. Gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) stimulates the secretion of luteinizing hormone (LH), which in turn, induces the secretion of maturation-inducing hormone (MIH) from the ovary. It is documented that small early vitellogenic (or stage IIIa) follicles are unable to undergo oocyte maturation whereas oocytes in mid- to late vitellogenic (stage IIIb) follicles can be induced by LH and MIH to become mature. To determine whether miRNAs may be involved in the growth and acquisition of maturational competency of ovarian follicles, we determined the miRNA expression profiles in follicular cells collected from stage IIIa and IIIb follicles using next-generation sequencing. It was found that miRNAs are abundantly expressed in the follicular cells from both stages IIIa and IIIb follicles. Furthermore, bioinformatics analysis revealed the presence of 214 known, 31 conserved novel and 44 novel miRNAs in zebrafish vitellogenic ovarian follicular cells. Most mature miRNAs in follicular cells were found to be in the length of 22 nucleotides. Differential expression analysis revealed that 11 miRNAs were significantly up-regulated, and 13 miRNAs were significantly down-regulated in the stage IIIb follicular cells as compared with stage IIIa follicular cells. The expression of four of the significantly regulated miRNAs, dre-miR-22a-3p, dre-miR-16a, dre-miR-181a-3p, and dre-miR-29a, was validated by real-time PCR. Finally, gene enrichment and pathway analyses of the predicted targets of the significantly regulated miRNAs supported the involvement of several key signaling pathways in regulating ovarian function, including oocyte maturation. Taken together, this study identifies novel zebrafish miRNAs and characterizes miRNA expression profiles in somatic cells within the zebrafish ovarian follicles. The differential expression of miRNAs between stage IIIa and IIIb follicular cells suggests that these miRNAs are important regulators of zebrafish ovarian follicle development and/or oocyte maturation.
Project description:To investigate the expression profile of three different developental stages of zebrafish embryos, we then performed gene expression profiling analysis using data obtained from RNA-seq of 3 different developmental of zebrafish embryos.
Project description:Somatic cells surrounding the oocyte were sampled at the following stages: developmentally incompetent or poorly competent prophase I oocytes (NC1 oocytes), developmentally competent prophase I oocytes (C1 oocytes), and developmentally competent metaphase II oocytes (C2 oocytes). NC1 samples were collected from immature stage IV follicles, C1 samples from immature stage VI follicles, and C2 samples from in vitro matured stage VI follicles. Global transcriptional profiling was performed using somatic cells collected from xenopus ovarian follicles during in vivo oocyte developmental competence acquisition. Somatic cells were collected at 3 stages of oogenesis: early stage follicles (stage IV, vitellogenic, prophase I arrested oocytes, meiotically competent but developmentally incompetent, n=5), late stage follicles (stage VI, post-vitellogenic, prophase I arrested oocytes, meiotically competent and developmentally competent, n=5) and ovulatory follicles collected after in vitro maturation induction with hCG of post-vitellogenic follicles (metaphase II arrested oocytes, developmentally fully competent, n=5).