China Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine ›› 2022, Vol. 49 ›› Issue (11): 4335-4345.doi: 10.16431/j.cnki.1671-7236.2022.11.024

• Genetics and Breeding • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Research Progress on Regulation of Follicle Development by Autophagy in Animals

DONG Shucan1,2, HOU Biwei1, ZOU Xian2, LI Yaokun1, LIU Dewu1, SUN Baoli1, GUO Yongqing1, DENG Ming1, LIU Guangbin1   

  1. 1. College of Animal Science, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou 510642, China;
    2. State Key Laboratory of Livestock and Poultry Breeding, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Animal Breeding and Nutrition, Institute of Animal Science, Guangdong Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Guangzhou 510640, China
  • Received:2022-05-11 Online:2022-11-05 Published:2022-11-04

Abstract: The follicle is fundamental for female mammals to exert their reproductive capacity, and its development is a dynamic process that mainly involves the formation of primordial follicles, the recruitment of follicles, the selection of dominant follicles, the ovulation of mature follicles and the luteinization of follicles after ovulation.Follicle development is regulated by complex physiological activities, such as the endocrine system, autophagy, apoptosis, and so on.Aautophagy is an evolutionarily conserved stress-responsive process that forms autophagosomes by enveloping intracellular materials and delivering them to lysosomes for degradation to help cells maintain the intracellular material metabolic balance, which plays an important role in the process of follicle development, on the one hand it can alleviate the follicle damage caused by stress by degrading or recycling damaged proteins or harmful metabolites; On the other hand, it can cause follicular atresia by generating a large number of autophagosomes for excessive degradation of organelles.The regulation of follicular development by autophagy requires the involvement of multiple canonical signaling pathways, such as PI3K-Akt-mTOR, MAPK-ULK1, ERK1/2 and Sirt1-FOXO1-Atg7, which have been shown to regulate the physiological activity of follicle cells by promoting or inhibiting autophagy through independent actions or interactions under the stimulation of stresses, such as hormones, oxidative stress, and cell starvation.Different levels of autophagy are currently known to have different effects on the survival of follicle cells, but there are still relatively few studies on the level of autophagy that determines whether a cell can survive.In addition, studies on the regulation of follicular development by autophagy have focused on granulosa cells, while the role of oocyte maturation and follicular membrane cells has been less well reported.In this review, the authors briefly describe the role of autophagy in the formation of ovarian reserve, the development of growing follicles, the formation and regression of corpus luteum and follicular atresia.In addition, the effects of autophagy induced by chemicals and stress on follicular development are analyzed, which will provide a comprehensive understanding of the regulation of autophagy in follicular development.

Key words: autophagy; ovary; follicular development; granulosa cells

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