Abstract
Our modern era is witnessing an increasing infertility rate worldwide. Although some of the causes can be attributed to our modern lifestyle (e.g., persistent organic pollutants, late pregnancy), our knowledge of the human ovarian tissue has remained limited and insufficient to reverse the infertility statistics. Indeed, all efforts have been focused on the endocrine and cellular function in support of the cell theory that dates back to the 18th century, while the human ovarian matrisome is still under-described. Hereby, we unveil the extracellular side of the story during different periods of the ovary life, demonstrating that follicle survival and development, and ultimately fertility, would not be possible without its involvement. We examined the human ovarian matrisome and described its remodeling from prepuberty until menopause, creating the first ovarian proteomic codex. Here, we confidently identified and quantified 98 matrisome proteins present in the three ovary groups. Among them, 26 were expressed differently among age groups, delineating a peculiar matrisomal fingerprint at each stage. Such proteins could be potential biomarkers phenotyping ovarian ECM at each age phase of female reproductive life. Beyond proteomics, our study presents a unique approach to understanding the data and depicting the spatiotemporal ECM-intracellular signaling networks and remodeling with age through imaging, advanced text-mining based on natural language processing technology, machine learning, and data sonification. Our findings provide essential context for healthy ovarian physiology, identifying and characterizing disease states, and recapitulating physiological tissues or development in vitro. This comprehensive proteomics analysis represents the ovarian proteomic codex and contributes to an improved understanding of the critical roles that ECM plays throughout the ovarian life span.