Electrotonic Coupling in the Pituitary Supports the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Gonadal Axis in a Sex Specific Manner
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Gap junctions are present in many cell types throughout the animal kingdom and allow fast intercellular electrical and chemical communication between neighboring cells. Connexin-36 (Cx36), the major neuronal gap junction protein, synchronizes cellular activity in the brain, but also in other organs. Here we identify a sex-specific role for Cx36 within the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) axis at the level of the anterior pituitary gland (AP). We show that Cx36 is expressed in gonadotropes of the AP sustaining their synchronous activity. Cx36 ablation affects the entire downstream HPG axis in females, but not in males. We demonstrate that Cx36-mediated coupling between gonadotropes in the AP supports gonadotropin-releasing hormone-induced secretion of luteinizing hormone. Furthermore, we provide evidence for negative feedback regulation of Cx36 expression in the AP by estradiol. We thus, conclude that hormonally-controlled plasticity of gap junction communication at the level of the AP constitutes an additional mechanism affecting female reproduction.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
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 teacher head, 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".