Abstract
Reproductive functions are closely related to nutritional status. Recent studies suggest that adiponectin may be a hormonal link between them. Adiponectin is an adipocytokine, abundantly expressed in adipose tissues. It plays a dominant role in lipid and carbohydrate metabolism by stimulating fatty acid oxidation, decreasing plasma triglycerides, and increasing cells' sensitivity to insulin and has direct antiatherosclerotic effects. The hormone is also postulated to play a modulatory role in the regulation of the reproductive system. The aim of this study was to identify differentially expressed genes (DE-genes) in response to adiponectin treatment of porcine luteal ovarian cells. The global expression of genes in the porcine ovary was investigated using the Porcine (V2) Two-color gene expression microarray, 4 × 44 (Agilent, USA). Analysis of the microarray data showed that 701 genes were differentially expressed and 389 genes showed a fold change greater than 1.2 (p < 0.05). Among this number, 186 genes were up-regulated and 203 were down-regulated. The list of DE-genes was used for gene ontology analyses. The biological process list was generated from up-regulated and down-regulated DE-genes. We found that up-regulated products of DE-genes take part in 30 biological processes and down-regulated products in 9. Analysis of the interaction network among DE-genes showed that adiponectin interacts with genes involved in important processes in luteal cells. These results provide a basis for future work describing the detailed interactions and relationships explaining local regulation of adiponectin actions in the ovary of pigs.
Highlights
During the last two decades, the view on adipose tissue has changed from it being a passive reservoir for energy storage to a complex and highly active metabolic and endocrine organ
A table containing a complete list of genes that were differentially expressed between controls and the cells treated with 10 μg/ml of adiponectin is presented in Supplementary Data
Most of these are involved in the protein complex assembly (GO:000646), which suggests that adiponectin induces the formation of new protein complexes in luteal cells
Summary
During the last two decades, the view on adipose tissue has changed from it being a passive reservoir for energy storage to a complex and highly active metabolic and endocrine organ. Adipose tissue is known to express and secrete a variety of bioactive peptides, i.e., leptin, tumor necrosis factor alpha, interleukin 6, resistin, adipsin, and adiponectin (Kershaw and Flier 2004). Adiponectin is an adipocytokine, abundantly expressed in adipose tissues. It is one of the most presented proteins in mammalian blood serum (2–25 μg/ml) (Kadowaki and Yamauchi 2005). The hormone is composed of 247 amino acids and has a molecular weight of about 28 kDa (Scherer et al 1995). As a result of post-translation modification, adiponectin circulates in blood in four different forms. The full-length peptide generates trimers, hexamers, and high-molecular-weight multimers and the globular fraction product of the proteolytic cleavage of the full-length peptide (Chandran et al 2003)
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