Exogenous adrenocorticotropic hormone affects genome-wide DNA methylation and transcriptome of corpus luteum in sows

What is it about?

In the word, approximately 5-10% of women at the reproductive age are facing some kind of infertility problem. Ovarian disorders are responsible for more than half of female infertility. There are many causes for ovarian disorders, and environmental stress may at least partially explain the origin of ovarian disorders due to female exposure to external stimuli generated from life pressure. Previous studies indicate that stress hormones are involved in the process of luteinization after ovulation and the maintenance of CL function. However, the mechanism regarding how stress influenced the function of CL is poorly understood. Here,we simulated stress animal model by injection of synthetic ACTH in sows after weaning for seven days; Whole-genome bisulfite sequencing (WGBS) and RNA-seq were respectively used to investigate the systematic association between DNA methylation and stress in CL as well as its relationship to genes expression. Our study firstly provided the genome-wide DNA methylation maps of CL, and firstly provided insights into the regulation of stress on DNA methylation in CL and revealed a remarkable alteration of DNA methylation in CL caused by ACTH treatment. We identified 4 DMR-related genes which may be involved in the CL function during stress conditions.

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