Inducing ciliation in equine oviduct epithelial cell monolayers

Recently, we developed re-differentiated equine oviduct epithelial cell (EOEC) monolayers in Transwell inserts. EOEC monolayers demonstrated various in vivo-like morphological characteristics, but often lacked secondary cilia. The monolayers were classified as low (<1% secondary cilia) or high (>5% secondary cilia) spontaneously re-differentiated, with the latter in the minority (5-10%). Interestingly, only high re-differentiated monolayers responded to Notch inhibition by developing in vivo-like secondary ciliation rates, i.e. over 50% ciliated cells. In this study, we aimed to consistently generate high re-differentiated monolayers. We first assessed whether secondary cilia formation was affected by donor mare, cycle stage and/or experiment. For this, harvested oviduct explants were cultured for 10 days at a concentration of 10 × 106 EOECs per 9.6 cm² well, to yield a confluent de-differentiated monolayer in conventional wells. Subsequently, the monolayers were trypsinized and the EOECs were reseeded onto the microporous membrane of hanging inserts at a concentration of 0.3 × 105 EOECs per 0.33 cm² insert. Three days after seeding, the EOECs were triggered to re-differentiate by air-liquid interface introduction (ALI). After 1 and 2 months in culture, EOEC monolayers were fixed and their phenotype was assessed by combined immunofluorescence staining to detect cilia (mouse anti-acetylated α-tubulin antibody; Alexa 488-conjugated goat anti-mouse secondary antibody),cell nuclei (Hoechst 33342) and actin filaments (Alexa 568-conjugated phalloidin). Neither cell donor nor cycle stage had any effect on secondary ciliation rates, whereas experimental modifications did. In 3/15 experiments, >95% of the monolayers demonstrated high re-differentiated monolayers. To discover the source of experimental variation, the seeding concentration of the de-differentiated EOECs was varied between 0.1 and 10 × 105 EOECs per 0.33 cm² insert; this did not affect secondary ciliation rates. In a third experiment, the effect of varying the seeding concentration of the harvested oviduct explant EOECs used to establish the de-differentiated monolayers, between 1 and 30 × 106 EOECs per 9.6 cm² well, was evaluated. EOECs harvested from de-differentiated monolayers 10 days after oviduct explant seeding at 1 or 5 × 106 EOECs per well supported the formation of high re-differentiated monolayers in >95% of cases. Within 1 month after ALI, >50% and >30% of the re-differentiated EOECs showed secondary cilia after initial seeding of 1 and 5 × 106 oviduct explant EOECs per well, respectively. Notch-inhibition helped to further increase secondary ciliation rates to >70% in the re-differentiated monolayers. We conclude that initial oviduct explant EOEC seeding concentration is critical to subsequently generating monolayers that closely resemble in vivo oviduct epithelia.