Expression data from ovarian follicles in different developmental stages

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 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).