Linear Dynamics Of Mrna Expression And Hormone Concentration Levels In Primary Cultures Of Bovine Granulosa Cells

Gene Regulatory Matrices (GRMs) are a well known technique for modelling the interactions between genes. This technique is used here, but with genes and hormones, to create Gene and Hormone Regulatory Matrices (GHRMs). In addition, a network (a directed weighted graph) is constructed from the underlying interactions of several mRNA encoding enzymes and receptors and two hormones: estradiol (E2) and progesterone (P4). This also permits comparison of the impact of each given environmental condition on E2 and P4 production, as well as mRNA expression levels. Apart from differential equations techniques (which require knowledge of rates of decay of a given hormone and mRNA) there is no existing technique to accurately predict the concentration of hormones based on the concentration of mRNA. This novel approach using GHRMs permits the use of nodes to accurately model the concentrations of the remaining ones. Experiments were performed to collect data on the gene expression and hormone concentration levels for primary bovine granulosa cells under different treatments. This data was used to build the GHRM models.