Quote:
Originally Posted by ginaj
During the menstrual cycle, the ovarian steroid hormones estrogen and progesterone control a dramatic transcriptional reprogramming of endometrial stromal cells (ESCs) leading to a receptive state for blastocyst implantation and the establishment of pregnancy. A key marker gene of this decidualization process is the prolactin gene.
What is a marker gene? And overall, what does this little paragraph mean? I'm confused.
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Basically the hormones estrogen and progesterone would contain their respective receptors on the ESCs and when the levels of these hormones increase during pregnancy, they would bind their receptors and initiate a signaling transduction pathway/cascade which can lead to translocation of certain transcription factors into the nucleus and therefore changes in gene expression. SO what it's saying is that the ESCs are important for successful implantation of the fertilized egg to allow for growth of the embryo. Also, a specific marker of this process is the prolactin gene (prolactin = another hormone that has several effects, one of which is that it stimulates milk production - which makes sense in preparation for feeding the baby). The fact that it serves as a marker simply means it is one of the genes that is turned on by the above mentioned signaling cascade that these hormones would initiate.