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A Mechanism for Ovulation Number Control
Every menstrual cycle, many follicles begin to develop but only a specific number ovulate. This ovulation number determines how many offspring are produced per litter, and differs between species. The physiological mechanism that controls ovulation number is unknown; a class of mathematical models c...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2022
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9329923/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35909517 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fendo.2022.816967 |
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author | Shilo, Michal Mayo, Avi Alon, Uri |
author_facet | Shilo, Michal Mayo, Avi Alon, Uri |
author_sort | Shilo, Michal |
collection | PubMed |
description | Every menstrual cycle, many follicles begin to develop but only a specific number ovulate. This ovulation number determines how many offspring are produced per litter, and differs between species. The physiological mechanism that controls ovulation number is unknown; a class of mathematical models can explain it, but these models have no physiological basis. Here, we suggest a physiological mechanism for ovulation number control, which enables selection of a specific number of follicles out of many, and analyze it in a mathematical model of follicular growth. The mechanism is based on a signal, intra-follicular androgen concentration, that measures follicle size relative to the other follicles. This signal has a biphasic effect, suppressing follicles that are too large or too small compared to others. The ovulation number is determined by the androgen inhibitory thresholds. The model has a scaling symmetry that explains why the dominant follicles grow linearly with time, as observed in human ultrasound data. This approach also explains how chronic hyperandrogenism disrupts ovulation in polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a leading cause of infertility. We propose specific experiments for testing the proposed mechanism. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9329923 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-93299232022-07-29 A Mechanism for Ovulation Number Control Shilo, Michal Mayo, Avi Alon, Uri Front Endocrinol (Lausanne) Endocrinology Every menstrual cycle, many follicles begin to develop but only a specific number ovulate. This ovulation number determines how many offspring are produced per litter, and differs between species. The physiological mechanism that controls ovulation number is unknown; a class of mathematical models can explain it, but these models have no physiological basis. Here, we suggest a physiological mechanism for ovulation number control, which enables selection of a specific number of follicles out of many, and analyze it in a mathematical model of follicular growth. The mechanism is based on a signal, intra-follicular androgen concentration, that measures follicle size relative to the other follicles. This signal has a biphasic effect, suppressing follicles that are too large or too small compared to others. The ovulation number is determined by the androgen inhibitory thresholds. The model has a scaling symmetry that explains why the dominant follicles grow linearly with time, as observed in human ultrasound data. This approach also explains how chronic hyperandrogenism disrupts ovulation in polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a leading cause of infertility. We propose specific experiments for testing the proposed mechanism. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-07-14 /pmc/articles/PMC9329923/ /pubmed/35909517 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fendo.2022.816967 Text en Copyright © 2022 Shilo, Mayo and Alon https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Endocrinology Shilo, Michal Mayo, Avi Alon, Uri A Mechanism for Ovulation Number Control |
title | A Mechanism for Ovulation Number Control |
title_full | A Mechanism for Ovulation Number Control |
title_fullStr | A Mechanism for Ovulation Number Control |
title_full_unstemmed | A Mechanism for Ovulation Number Control |
title_short | A Mechanism for Ovulation Number Control |
title_sort | mechanism for ovulation number control |
topic | Endocrinology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9329923/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35909517 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fendo.2022.816967 |
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