Attardi 9707587 Career Advancement Awards expand the opportunity for women researchers to advance their career. Dr. Attardi will use these funds to increase her knowledge of brain anatomy and to acquire state-of-the-art neuroanatomical techniques to allow her to examine the differential actions of progesterone leading to the facilitation or inhibition of the gonadotropin surge. The progesterone receptor is unusual among members of the steroid/thyroid family of nuclear receptors since, it exists in two isoforms, PRa and PRb, in all species except the rabbit. Moreover, it has been suggested that responsiveness to progesterone within a particular tissue could depend upon changes in the relative ratios of the two isoforms especially given that the two isoforms change developmentally and with endocrine manipulations. Since these studies used only tissue from the peripheral system, it is not clear whether the two isoforms are involved in the mechanism of progesterone action in neural tissue as well. Dr. Attardi will now examine both the presence and the regulation of the two progesterone isoforms in the brain and pituitary. She will determine the role that these two isoforms play in the modulating the ability of estrogen and progesterone to regulate gonadotropin secretion. Understanding the integration of this complex neuroendocrine mechanism is very important since it underlies the perpetuation of the species.
