Morphological changes of gonadotropin-releasing hormone neurons in the rat preoptic area across puberty
Haogang Xue
Xiaodong Gai
Weiqi Sun
Chun Li
Quan Liu
摘要：Gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) neurons in the preoptic area may undergo mor-phological changes during the pubertal period when their activities are upregulated. To clarify the regulatory mechanism of puberty onset, this study aimed to investigate the morphological changes of GnRH neurons in the preoptic area of GnRH-enhanced green lfuorescent protein transgenic rats. Under confocal laser microscopy, pubertal GnRH neurons exhibited an inverted Y distribution pattern. Prepubertal GnRH neurons were generally unipolar and bipolar, and were distinguished as smooth type cells with few small processes or irregular type cells with many spine-like processes in the proximal dendrites. The number of GnRH neurons in the preoptic area and spine-like processes were increased during the course of reproductive matu-ration. There was no signiifcant difference between male and female rats. Immunolfuorescence staining revealed synaptophysin punctae close to the distal end of GnRH neurons, indicating that some presynaptic terminals may form a synaptic linkage with these neurons.
机标关键词：preoptic areamorphological changesdistribution patternfemale rats
论文发表日期：2014-01-01
在线出版日期：2025-08-15（本平台首次上网日期，不代表文献的发表时间）
页数：10( 1303-1312 )
英文信息