Fig. 3: Knockdown of E-cad leads to oocyte apoptosis in neonatal mouse ovaries. | Cell Death & Disease

Fig. 3: Knockdown of E-cad leads to oocyte apoptosis in neonatal mouse ovaries.

From: Oocyte-derived E-cadherin acts as a multiple functional factor maintaining the primordial follicle pool in mice

Fig. 3: Knockdown of E-cad leads to oocyte apoptosis in neonatal mouse ovaries.

a The ovaries at 2 dpp were transfected with E-cad-KD or empty lentivirus and cultured for 3 days. E-cad-KD ovaries exhibited more TUNEL-positive signals (green) than the control. b Based on the analysis of the five largest cross-sections of cultured ovaries, the average number of apoptotic signals was greater in E-cad-KD ovaries (82.1 ± 11.5) than that in the control ovaries (11.0 ± 1.6). c Western blot and the relevant intensity analyses revealed that the expression of cleaved caspase 3 (C-caspase 3) was significantly elevated in E-cad-KD treated ovaries compared with that in the control group. d Immunofluorescence assay showed that knockdown of E-cad induced cleaved caspase 3 expression (arrows) in the oocyte nuclei of primordial follicles. e Histological and statistics analyses showed that inhibition of caspase activity by Z-VAD-FMK partially rescued the oocyte loss in E-cad-KD treated ovaries. Oocytes were labeled with DDX4 (red). The experiments were repeated at least three times, and representative images are shown. The data are presented as the means ± S.D. and considered statistically significant at P < 0.05. Scale bars: 50 μm

Back to article page