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Effects of spaceflight aboard the International Space Station on mouse estrous cycle and ovarian gene expression

Ovarian steroids dramatically impact normal homeostatic and metabolic processes of most tissues within the body, including muscle, bone, neural, immune, cardiovascular, and reproductive systems. Determining the effects of spaceflight on the ovary and estrous cycle is, therefore, critical to our unde...

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Autores principales: Hong, Xiaoman, Ratri, Anamika, Choi, Sungshin Y., Tash, Joseph S., Ronca, April E., Alwood, Joshua S., Christenson, Lane K.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7954810/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33712627
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41526-021-00139-7
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author Hong, Xiaoman
Ratri, Anamika
Choi, Sungshin Y.
Tash, Joseph S.
Ronca, April E.
Alwood, Joshua S.
Christenson, Lane K.
author_facet Hong, Xiaoman
Ratri, Anamika
Choi, Sungshin Y.
Tash, Joseph S.
Ronca, April E.
Alwood, Joshua S.
Christenson, Lane K.
author_sort Hong, Xiaoman
collection PubMed
description Ovarian steroids dramatically impact normal homeostatic and metabolic processes of most tissues within the body, including muscle, bone, neural, immune, cardiovascular, and reproductive systems. Determining the effects of spaceflight on the ovary and estrous cycle is, therefore, critical to our understanding of all spaceflight experiments using female mice. Adult female mice (n = 10) were exposed to and sacrificed on-orbit after 37 days of spaceflight in microgravity. Contemporary control (preflight baseline, vivarium, and habitat; n = 10/group) groups were maintained at the Kennedy Space Center, prior to sacrifice and similar tissue collection at the NASA Ames Research Center. Ovarian tissues were collected and processed for RNA and steroid analyses at initial carcass thaw. Vaginal wall tissue collected from twice frozen/thawed carcasses was fixed for estrous cycle stage determinations. The proportion of animals in each phase of the estrous cycle (i.e., proestrus, estrus, metestrus, and diestrus) did not appreciably differ between baseline, vivarium, and flight mice, while habitat control mice exhibited greater numbers in diestrus. Ovarian tissue steroid concentrations indicated no differences in estradiol across groups, while progesterone levels were lower (p < 0.05) in habitat and flight compared to baseline females. Genes involved in ovarian steroidogenic function were not differentially expressed across groups. As ovarian estrogen can dramatically impact multiple non-reproductive tissues, these data support vaginal wall estrous cycle classification of all female mice flown in space. Additionally, since females exposed to long-term spaceflight were observed at different estrous cycle stages, this indicates females are likely undergoing ovarian cyclicity and may yet be fertile.
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spelling pubmed-79548102021-03-28 Effects of spaceflight aboard the International Space Station on mouse estrous cycle and ovarian gene expression Hong, Xiaoman Ratri, Anamika Choi, Sungshin Y. Tash, Joseph S. Ronca, April E. Alwood, Joshua S. Christenson, Lane K. NPJ Microgravity Article Ovarian steroids dramatically impact normal homeostatic and metabolic processes of most tissues within the body, including muscle, bone, neural, immune, cardiovascular, and reproductive systems. Determining the effects of spaceflight on the ovary and estrous cycle is, therefore, critical to our understanding of all spaceflight experiments using female mice. Adult female mice (n = 10) were exposed to and sacrificed on-orbit after 37 days of spaceflight in microgravity. Contemporary control (preflight baseline, vivarium, and habitat; n = 10/group) groups were maintained at the Kennedy Space Center, prior to sacrifice and similar tissue collection at the NASA Ames Research Center. Ovarian tissues were collected and processed for RNA and steroid analyses at initial carcass thaw. Vaginal wall tissue collected from twice frozen/thawed carcasses was fixed for estrous cycle stage determinations. The proportion of animals in each phase of the estrous cycle (i.e., proestrus, estrus, metestrus, and diestrus) did not appreciably differ between baseline, vivarium, and flight mice, while habitat control mice exhibited greater numbers in diestrus. Ovarian tissue steroid concentrations indicated no differences in estradiol across groups, while progesterone levels were lower (p < 0.05) in habitat and flight compared to baseline females. Genes involved in ovarian steroidogenic function were not differentially expressed across groups. As ovarian estrogen can dramatically impact multiple non-reproductive tissues, these data support vaginal wall estrous cycle classification of all female mice flown in space. Additionally, since females exposed to long-term spaceflight were observed at different estrous cycle stages, this indicates females are likely undergoing ovarian cyclicity and may yet be fertile. Nature Publishing Group UK 2021-03-12 /pmc/articles/PMC7954810/ /pubmed/33712627 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41526-021-00139-7 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Hong, Xiaoman
Ratri, Anamika
Choi, Sungshin Y.
Tash, Joseph S.
Ronca, April E.
Alwood, Joshua S.
Christenson, Lane K.
Effects of spaceflight aboard the International Space Station on mouse estrous cycle and ovarian gene expression
title Effects of spaceflight aboard the International Space Station on mouse estrous cycle and ovarian gene expression
title_full Effects of spaceflight aboard the International Space Station on mouse estrous cycle and ovarian gene expression
title_fullStr Effects of spaceflight aboard the International Space Station on mouse estrous cycle and ovarian gene expression
title_full_unstemmed Effects of spaceflight aboard the International Space Station on mouse estrous cycle and ovarian gene expression
title_short Effects of spaceflight aboard the International Space Station on mouse estrous cycle and ovarian gene expression
title_sort effects of spaceflight aboard the international space station on mouse estrous cycle and ovarian gene expression
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7954810/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33712627
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41526-021-00139-7
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