Human granulosa cells acquired as leftover from IVF treatment can be used to study infertility problems and are a valuable tool in the research of follicle maturation and ovulation. There is a need for more defined and long-term culture protocols for studying the response of granulosa cells upon treatment with selected hormones/chemicals. In the current study, we tested the effect of adding FGF2, IGF2 and FSH into defined basal medium in order to find culture conditions that would support proliferation of cumulus and mural granulosa cells along with the expression of common granulosa cell type markers such as FSHR, AMHR2, LHR and CYP19A1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMicroRNAs (miRNAs) are known post-transcriptional regulators of various biological processes including ovarian follicle development. We have previously identified miRNAs from human pre-ovulatory ovarian granulosa cells that are expressed from the intronic regions of two key genes in normal follicular development: FSH receptor (FSHR) and CYP19A1, the latter encoding the aromatase enzyme. The present study aims to identify the target genes regulated by these miRNAs: hsa-miR-548ba and hsa-miR-7973, respectively.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChromatin immunoprecipitation coupled with next-generation sequencing (ChIP-seq) has revolutionized our understanding of chromatin-related biological processes. The method, however, requires thousands of cells and has therefore limited applications in situations where cell numbers are limited. Here we describe a novel method called Restriction Assisted Tagmentation Chromatin Immunoprecipitation (RAT-ChIP) that enables global histone modification profiling from as few as 100 cells.
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