#corticotrophs — Public Fediverse posts

Our new preprint is now out!

Dynamic transcriptional heterogeneity in pituitary corticotrophs

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.04.04.645979v1

We analysed publicly available single-cell RNA sequencing data of pituitary gland tissue and looked at corticotrophs, cells that are central to mediate stress responses.

We identified several transcriptional states in these cells that are related to how they respond to stress. Cells are able to transition between these states and this might be helpful for them to respond to stress coming at unpredictable times.

We also highlight issues related to using scRNAseq to look at functional subpopulations of cells.

#scrnaseq #stress #physiology #cellbiology #bioinformatics #corticotrophs #pituitary

Very happy to share our newly published #article "Sex differences in pituitary corticotroph excitability".

It is well known that sex differences exist in stress-related disorders, with women having twice the lifetime rate of depression compared to men and most anxiety disorders.

Corticotroph cells in the pituitary gland are a key player in the generation of hormonal stress responses. However, their contribution to sexually differential responses of the stress axis (which might underlie differences in stress-related disorders) is very poorly understood.

We found sex differences in the electrical activity of these cells, which could be related to differences in their gene expression pattern.

These findings shed light on the cellular mechanisms underlying sex differences in stress responses, contributing to a better understanding of stress-related disorders and potential avenues for diagnosis and treatment.

#stress #pituitary #research #electrophysiology #physiology #corticotrophs #hpa #anxiety

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2023.1205162/full