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Frank A. Simmen, Rosalia C. M. Simmen, Orchestrating the Menstrual Cycle: Discerning the Music from the Noise, Endocrinology, Volume 147, Issue 3, 1 March 2006, Pages 1094–1096, https://doi.org/10.1210/en.2005-1451
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During the menstrual cycle, the uterine endometrium undergoes a remarkable series of structural, cellular, and biochemical changes that ultimately render it capable of receiving an implantation-competent blastocyst (Fig. 1). In the absence of a developmentally normal blastocyst, the endometrium undergoes shedding and regeneration in preparation for yet another round of potential embryo implantation. The successive phases of endometrial tissue growth, differentiation, and remodeling occur in close synchrony with preimplantation development of the embryo. Indeed, infertility largely arises as a consequence of developmental asynchrony between the uterus and the embryo (1, 2).
The now-classic histological evaluations of endometrium from normal cycling women underscored the molecular complexities of this tissue as well as identified distinct stages of endometrial development (3), predominantly orchestrated by the changing levels of circulating estrogen and progesterone (Fig. 1). Perhaps more significantly, these early studies helped establish a foundation for the subsequent development and implementation of in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer techniques to alleviate infertility in couples, a blending of basic and translational research. Although reproductive technologies have made a large impact on the problem of human infertility, they suffer from relatively low success rates due, in part, to our current inability to properly distinguish receptive from nonreceptive states of the recipient’s endometrium (4). This knowledge gap has stimulated much recent effort to identify individual genes and the transcriptome that underpin cyclic changes in human endometrium and embryo-receptive state. The paper by Talbi et al. (5) in the current issue of Endocrinology has raised the bar in this active area of research.
