Transcriptomic profiling of bovine ovarian cortical tissue cultured with FSH

The objective of this study was to determine the transcriptomic effects of FSH stimulation in the bovine ovarian cortical tissue, including responses elicited by the preantral follicles within. Genes whose change in expression between groups was associated with FDR < 0.05 were considered differentially expressed genes (DEG). Results showed after 4 days of culture, there were 34 DEG between FSH- and vehicle-treated ovary; of those, 28 genes were upregulated and 6 were down-regulated in response to FSH. Time-course gene expression analysis identified 252 genes that changed over time in FSH- compared to the vehicle-treated ovary. Overall design: Fragments of the cortical region were isolated from bovine ovaries. Follwing removal of antral follicles, cortical fragments were randomly assigned to not be cultured (day 0 control) or be cultured with recombinant human FSH (100 ng/ml) or a vehicle control (FSH diluent, i.e., water in culture medium) for 2 or 4 days. Three replicates were performed. Samples were submitted to 3'Tag RNA sequencing using Illumina HiSeq.