Investigation of the Functional Proteins Related to Fertility in Cattle’s Endometrium by Protein‐Protein Interactions Networks

Pregnancy loss is an important economic loss in cattle industry. This study was conducted to identify pre- and / or post-implantation genes and cellular algorithms. For this purpose, transcriptome data of endo-metrium tissue were analyzed. These data refer to three heifer categories: high fertile (HF), sub-fertile (SF) and infertile (IF). After gene detection, genes were divided into two groups: Up-expressed genes, which were up-regulated in every comparison of either favorable fertility cases or unfavorable fertility cases (HF vs. SF, HF vs. IF, and SF vs. IF), and down-expressed genes, which were down-regulated in the mentioned comparisons. String database was applied to construct protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks and clus-terone plugin was used to determine the significant sub-network. Enrichment analysis, which involves the gene ontology and functional pathway, was performed to enrich the results. Our results suggested that over-expression of SHCBP1, NOP14, PGM5, and DHX58 genes may have positive effect on the outcome of pregnancy, and down-expression of IMP3, ATP5O, and RPL7 genes could help the reproductive efficiency. The results of the present study showed that the genes in up-regulated clusters could manipulate epithelial differentiation, fundamental biological role, glucose metabolism, and immune response, which led to re-duced pregnancy loss. Also the genes in down-regulated clusters may participate in the improvement of pregnancy outcome by inducing anti-apoptotic processes. This study proposes the pregnancy-associated key genes and pathways to improve pregnancy success in cattle and other domestic animals.