Use of microarray technology to profile gene expression patterns important for reproduction in cattle

Fertility in cattle is a major component of many agricultural enterprises and there is pressure to devise methods to improve this. A number of approaches are ongoing, one of which is to better understand the cellular and molecular events of the development of reproductive tissues and to use these as targets for developing new strategies. Microarray technologies now allow us the potential to determine the transcriptional profile of expressed genes in a given tissue. This review focuses on the types of microarrays available for studies in cattle and concludes that genes associated with one or more of the cellular processes of cell survival/death, intracellular signalling, transcription and translation, cell division and proliferation and cellular metabolism are the main transcriptional pathways that control the development of ovarian follicles, oocytes, early embryos and the uterine endometrium about the time of the establishment of pregnancy.