EXPRESSION OF GHRELIN AND ITS RECEPTOR IN THE CUMULUS?OOCYTE COMPLEXES OF BOVINE.

SIRINI MA; ANCHORDOQUY JM; ANCHORDOQUY JP; RELLING AE; BARBISAN G; FURNUS C

Chascomus

Jornada; XVI Jornadas Anuales de la Sociedad Argentina de Biología; 2014

Sociedades Argentinade de Biología.

Ghrelin is a 28 amino acid gastric peptide. This hormone is associated with the food intake and energy homeostasis. Although growing evidence indicates that ghrelin is expressed and/or operates at different levels of the hypothalamo?pituitary?ovary axis, until now, has not been described the presence of ghrelin and its receptor in the bovine oocyte-cumulus complex (COC). The aim of this experiment was to localize the mRNA of ghrelin and its active receptor (GHS-R1A) in the bovine COC. Oocyte-cumulus complex were aspirated from bovine ovaries and were cultured in TCM-199 medium at 39 °C in 5% CO2 in air with saturated humidity for 24h. Medium was supplemented with increasing concentrations of ghrelin (0pM; 20pM; 40pM; 60pM). Using PCR, we measure gene expression of ghrelin and its receptor. We demonstrated that ghrelin and its active receptor (GHSR-1a) were expressed in the immature COCs bovine and matured COC with 20, 40 and 60 pM of ghrelin. Although these findings alone do not prove the existence of a relationship between ghrelin and fertility, they are a mandatory first step toward understanding the role of ghrelin in metabolic regulation of fertility in bovine.