Isolation of granulosa cells from follicular fluid; applications in biomedical and molecular biology experiments

BACKGROUND: Recently, a lot of research has been conducted to investigate the molecular mechanisms of the low quality of oocytes with granulosa cells (GCs). GCs are one of the major cell types found in follicular fluid and purification of these cells from the follicular fluid is very important for further studies. Although, there are different techniques of purification, a method for separation of highly-pure and minimally-damaged cells is necessary. In this paper, we presented a novel method for high purification of GCs with a large quantity and high purity. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Follicular fluid was collected from patients who referred for in vitro fertilization and GCs in follicular fluid were extracted by Ficoll, Percoll and Red blood cell lysing buffer (RLB) methods. Then purity of extracted GCs was assessed by flow cytometry and morphological properties of GCs were observed by differential interference contrast microscopy. The purity of deoxyribonucleic acid and ribonucleic acid extracts was examined by NanoDrop 1000, pre-restriction fragment length polymorphism and electrophoresis techniques. Quality and quantity of extracting GCs were affected during the cell separation procedures. RESULTS: Our results showed that each of purification method can affect quality and quantity of extracted cells. CONCLUSION: RLB method for extraction of GCs was shown to be a convenient procedure in comparison with Ficoll and Percoll methods.