Expression of androgen receptor and estrogen receptor-alpha in the developing pituitary gland of male sheep lamb

To explore the expression of androgen receptor (AR) and estrogen receptor alpha (ERα) in the developing pituitary of male lamb, we detected AR and ERα expression in the anterior pituitary of lambs aged 2–7 months old by immunohistochemistry. The results showed that both AR immunoreactivity (AR-ir) and ERα immunoreactivity (ERα-ir) were localized in the nuclei of anterior pituitary cell. The percentage of the anterior pituitary cells expressing ERα fluctuated from 8.79 ± 0.02% to 11.80 ± 0.04% during the examined stages, but fell significantly to the lowest level at 6 months. While the proportion of AR-ir showed significant changes, it was in 11.52 ± 1.26% at 2 months, it firstly increased to 19.86 ± 1.03% at 3 months, and then significantly decreased to 8.18 ± 1.17% at 6 months (P < 0.05). The expression of both AR-ir and ERα-ir were the lowest level at 6 months old. By staining for PCNA, we observed that the changes in expression of AR and ERα at different lamb ages did not result from cell proliferation of anterior pituitary cells. These results indicate that both AR and ERα are important in regulation of secretary function of anterior pituitary in sheep lamb, although the related mechanism needs to be elucidated further.