Aging disrupts spatiotemporal coordination in the cycling murine ovary

These processes rely on the precisely coordinated intricate multicellular interactions across time and space. How aging disrupts these interactions, leading to an overall decline in reproductive and endocrine functions, remains understudied.

To understand the multicellular dynamics that underlie ovarian function and their changes with age, here we use Slide-seq, a near-cellular spatial transcriptomics method, to profile 22 mouse ovaries across the reproductive cycle and chronological age, representing 610,620 near-cellular spots across 69 spatial transcriptomic profiles. We develop a segmentation analysis to identify spatial niches that capture different states of folliculogenesis from static snapshots in situ, allowing us to examine the multicellular dynamics of 358 oocytes, 668 follicles, and 236 corpora lutea.