Abstract
A successful pregnancy relies on the establishment of decidualization, which involves the morphological and functional reprogramming of the progesterone-primed endometrial stromal cells under the influence of estrogen. In this protocol, we present a method for acquiring highly purified stromal cell isolated from the mouse uterus on day 4 of early pregnancy. Cultured primary stromal cells are then subject to further applications, such as RNA interference, overexpression, pharmaceutical treatment, immunoprecipitation, chromatic immunoprecipitation, and so on. Additionally, we provide a technique for the in vitro decidualization of cultured stromal cells using estrogen and progesterone. The in vitro decidualization method allows for the physically significant study of decidualization-related molecules. Altogether, this protocol provides a reliable and efficient method to facilitate further studies to define the molecular mechanism of decidualization.
