Attenuation of Ampullary Anoctamin 1 by the peritoneal fluid in rhesus macaques with spontaneous endometriosis†

Abstract

Altered peristaltic and ciliary dysfunction is a feature of females with endometriosis. To further explore this premise, we examined the ampulla of rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) with and without spontaneous endometriosis for the expression of adenylate kinase 7 (AK7), a mitochondrial-dwelling nucleotide converting enzyme with critical roles in cellular kinesis, forkhead protein box J1 (FOXJ1), a marker of cilia abundance, and Anoctamin 1 (ANO1) as a marker of both smooth muscle contraction and ciliogenesis. We further performed an in vitro experiment that treated ampullary segments with peritoneal fluid from animals with and without endometriosis. We report significantly downregulated expression of ANO1 in the ampulla of monkeys with endometriosis (in vivo), and in the ampullary segments exposed to peritoneal fluid of animals with endometriosis. We did not observe statistically significant differences in the expression of AK7 or FOXJ1 both in vivo and in vitro. This highlights potentially essential roles of ANO1 in the oviduct, the dampening of which may lead to a specific subtype of endometriosis-caused subfertility.

Keywords: ciliation; endometriosis; fertility; muscle contraction; secretion.