The Brain-Uterus Connection: Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) and Its Receptor (Ntrk2) Are Conserved in the Mammalian Uterus
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The neurotrophins are neuropeptides that are potent regulators of neurite growth and survival. Although mainly studied in the brain and nervous system, recent reports have shown that neurotrophins are expressed in multiple target tissues and cell types throughout the body. Additionally, dysregulation of neurotrophins has been linked to several disease conditions including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's, psychiatric disorders, and cancer. Brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is a member of the neurotrophin family that elicits its actions through the neurotrophic tyrosine receptor kinase type 2 (Ntrk2). Together BDNF and Ntrk2 are capable of activating the adhesion, angiogenesis, apoptosis, and proliferation pathways. These pathways are prominently involved in reproductive physiology, yet a cross-species examination of BDNF and Ntrk2 expression in the mammalian uterus is lacking. Herein we demonstrated the conserved nature of BDNF and Ntrk2 across several mammalian species by mRNA and protein sequence alignment, isolated BDNF and Ntrk2 transcripts in the uterus by Real-Time PCR, localized both proteins to the glandular and luminal epithelium, vascular smooth muscle, and myometrium of the uterus, determined that the major isoforms expressed in the human endometrium were pro-BDNF, and truncated Ntrk2, and finally demonstrated antibody specificity. Our findings suggest that BDNF and Ntrk2 are transcribed, translated, and conserved across mammalian species including human, mouse, rat, pig, horse, and the bat.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".