A first catalog of genes involved in pig ovarian follicular differentiation

As a first step toward the characterization of genetic expression in pig ovaries, we have selected 238 clones by differential hybridization from a pig granulosa cell cDNA library, using probes prepared from RNA extracted from either untreated or FSH-treated cells and, in order to generate expressed sequence tags (ESTs), we have performed 3' and 5' single-pass sequencing of these clones. Sequences of the 3' end of the 167 clones that produced informative sequence data were first compared with each other, revealing a redundancy level of 21%. Sequences from the 136 unique clones were analyzed for similarities with sequence data included in Genbank and EMBL databases. Among these unique clones, 54 (40%) matched significantly with sequences from either Genbank of EMBL: 4 with known genes in pig, 35 matched with previously reported human genes, and 15 with other mammalian genes. Eighty-two clones (60%) showed no significant match with any gene or DNA sequence in the Genbank and EMBL databases and thus may represent new pig transcripts.