Gene expression profiling of bovine ovarian follicular selection

Abstract

Lack of, or abnormal, ovarian follicular development is a major factor associated with impaired fertility in mammals. However, development of new treatments is limited by our poor understanding of ovarian follicular development. Understanding the mechanisms by which a cohort of follicles is recruited and a single follicle is selected for further development to a dominant follicle is the key to understanding pyre-ovulatory follicular development. The objectives of this study are to identify changes in gene expression profiles during the selection stage of bovine follicular waves. Follicles of different sizes (8 mm to 12 mm) were collected and intra follicular concentrations of proastraddle, eststenedione were measured. Gene expression profiles were obtained using bovine c dna microarrays. Of the 17,692 probes on the arrays, 606 unique genes and 32 sequences not matching any known genes were identified as differentially expressed with a cut off false discovery rate (FDR) of 0.05. Seventeen gene expression profiles were confirmed using quantitative RT-PCR. Five.