2. Materials and methods
All reagents used in this study were obtained from Sigma (St.
Louis, MO, USA) unless otherwise specified.
2.1. Collection of ovaries
Swine ovaries were collected at a local slaughterhouse from
Large White cross-bred gilts, placed into cold PBS (4 °C) supple-
mented with penicillin (500 IU/ml), streptomycin (500 lg/ml)
and amphotericin B (3.75 lg/ml), maintained in a freezer bag and
transported to the laboratory within 1 h.
2.2. Immunohistochemistry
Ovaries were placed in 10% buffered formalin and paraffin
embedded. Following routine processing, 6-lm thick sections were
placed on polylysine-treated slides and stained using a polyclonal
rabbit antihuman STC 1 antiserum well characterized in terms of
its specificity for STC 1 (Varghese et al., 1998) and previously
validated in the swine (Song et al., 2009) according to the method
described in Deol et al. (2000) slightly modified. Briefly, sections