= Luteal cell
A <luteal cell> is a <biological cell> belonging to the <corpus luteum>; in endocrine descriptions, the term usually emphasizes its steroid-producing populations. These <cells> arise as follicular <tissue> undergoes <luteinization> and contribute <progesterone>. The whole <corpus luteum> also contains vessels and other supporting <cells>, so an endocrine-cell count is not a count of every cell in the structure.<Anatomy and Physiology 2e by J. Gordon Betts and others>[Section27.2: corpus-luteum formation and progesterone]{ref}
Functional diversity can persist within the steroid-producing population. In 1982, researchers separated larger and smaller <luteal cells> from sheep by a flow-based separation procedure. For equal cell counts, unstimulated <progesterone> release from the larger-cell preparation was about twenty times that from the smaller-cell preparation. The result concerns the tested ewe preparation and conditions, not a universal ratio for all mammals.<Characterization of Two Steroidogenic Cell Types in the Ovine Corpus Luteum by T. A. Fitz and others>[Original abstract: cell separation and equal-number secretion comparison]{ref}
For an illustrative accounting model, ten <cells> each secreting one unit per hour and ten <cells> each secreting twenty units per hour contribute ten and two hundred units per hour respectively. Equal cell numbers need not imply equal endocrine contributions. Actual circulating <progesterone> additionally depends on distribution and removal from the <blood>.
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