Conversion of testosterone and progesterone to oestrone by the ovary of the rat embryo in organ culture

Estrogen production by fetal and infantile rat ovaries

“…Therefore researchers including ourselves were not concerned when they were unable to identify estrogens after incubation of fetal human (Jungmann and Schweppe, 1968), bovine (Weniger et at, 1972) or rat ovaries (Schindler and Friedrich, 1975) (George and Wilson, 1978), guinea pig (Sholl and Goy, 1978) and mouse (Terada et at, 1984) confirmed the existence of aromatase activity in the fetal ovary of these species. (Weniger et al, 1984. However, after birth synthesis of estradiol increased in importance and by d 14 had supplanted that of estrone (Picon et at, 1985;Zeis, 1986, 1987).…”

Aromatase activity in fetal rat gonads

“…It was felt that there was need for such a review considering the discrepancy in the results obtained by various Oestrone was readily identified and represented 5% of the added precursor. However, oestradiol was not identified with certainty and its synthesis level was calculated to be <01% (Weniger et al, 1984). Two conclusions can be drawn from this experiment.…”

Change in the relative importance of oestrone and oestradiol synthesis by the rat ovary between fetal and prepubertal stages

“…While oestradiol is the main oestrogen produced by the ovary of the rabbit (Milewich et al, 1977) or human fetus (George & Wilson, 1978), the ovary of the 19-20-day-old rat fetus forms almost exclusively oestrone (Weniger et al, 1984). We therefore investigated whether there was a shift from oestrone to oestradiol in more advanced fetal stages and neonates.…”