Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0428-228X

Date of Award

Spring 5-22-2026

Document Type

Thesis (Undergraduate)

Department

Biological Sciences

First Advisor

Brittany A Goods

Second Advisor

Bing He

Abstract

Hormone therapies (HTs) are commonly used across gender-diverse populations for reproductive, gender-affirming, and overall healthcare. Despite this, their cellular and molecular impacts on female reproductive tissues remain poorly characterized. Existing literature documenting HTs’ physiological effects rarely resolve underlying transcriptomic mechanisms, and ‘omics studies of HTs’ impacts are often limited to animal models. This research leverages paired ectocervical and endocervical epithelial cell lines (Ect1/E6E7 CRL-2614 and End1/E6E7 CRL-2615) in vitro to characterize the short-term transcriptomic effects of feminizing (E2) and masculinizing (DHT) HTs via bulk RNA sequencing. Cell cultures were treated with physiological and supraphysiological doses of E2 and DHT and harvested at 24h and 48h after treatment; transcriptomic profiles were assessed via PCA, differential expression (DE) analysis, and pathway analysis using PROGENy. Cell line type is found to be the primary driver of transcriptomic separation, followed by timepoint; HT type and dose appear to contribute minimally to overall variance. Pathway analysis reveals cell-type-specific mono- and biphasic responses in Estrogen, Androgen, and downstream proliferative and inflammatory signaling pathways, while mucin gene expression is unaffected within the experimental time window. These results suggest that immortalized cervical cell lines are more appropriate for studying non-genomic HT responses than classical genomic ones, and underscore the need for longer-term and larger-scale studies to fully characterize HTs' impact on female reproductive tissues.

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