Collaborative Research: RUI: The Neural Basis of Becoming a Parent: From Genotype to Phenotype

合作研究：RUI：成为父母的神经基础：从基因型到表型

• 批准号: 1455957
• 负责人: Rae Silver
• 金额: $ 56万
• 依托单位: Barnard College
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-07-01 至 2019-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1455957&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; RUI; Neural; Basis

Important changes in behavior occur with the transition to parenthood. For animals that exhibit parental care, raising offspring successfully involves transitioning from aggressive and sexual behaviors to more caring and nurturing ones. However, it is not clear how the brain brings about this transition. In a rapidly changing world, understanding how the environment affects the brain and how the brain affects the behavioral transition into parental care will shed light on how changes in environment can ultimately affect how all organisms reproduce. In an interdisciplinary collaboration between Drs. Calisi-Rodríguez and MacManes they will characterize changes in gene expression and specific protein levels in important tissues essential for reproduction, namely the hypothalamus, pituitary, and gonads, in the rock dove (Columba livia) during the transition into parental care behaviors. Like most birds, rock doves incubate eggs, but are also unique in that they "lactate" to feed their young, showing stereotypical avian and mammalian parental behaviors. This makes doves a potentially powerful theoretical bridge to understand the neurobiology of transitions into parenting. Drs. Calisi-Rodríguez and MacManes will generate a large genomic dataset and identify critical genes involved in important stages of parental care. The results will have broad potential applications including the management of captive breeding for conservation or agricultural purposes, and to inform the study of neural deficiencies in parent-offspring bonding. In addition, the researchers will develop and host an annual summer program, "Summer City Science", to expose high school students from low-income neighborhoods and underrepresented backgrounds who excel in the sciences to a range of scientific fields. This will provide students the opportunity to work closely and personally with faculty, and their research and labs. Students in both the Calisi-Rodríguez and MacManes labs will help to serve as mentors and instructors for Summer City Science to increase the scope of the training of all parties involved. The overall wider objective of this program is to broaden participation in science, creating a more efficient and diverse workforce.Previous research has implicated specific hormones that play a role in the maintenance of parental care behavior in vertebrates, including oxytocin and vasopressin (avian homologs: mesotocin and vasotocin), vasoactive intestinal peptide, and prolactin. However, very little is known about when and how the brain transitions into parental care behavior in any vertebrate, and this knowledge is fundamentally important to understand the mechanisms that mediate parental care. The Principal Investigator, during her tenure as an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow, discovered that the hypothalamic neurohormone, gonadotropin inhibitory hormone (GnIH), caused significant changes in abundance of GnIH containing cells in both birds and mammals during the transition to parental care. Here, the researchers propose to expand this knowledge using classic offspring removal and replacement manipulations to uncover the role of GnIH during the transition to parental care behavior. In addition to this targeted approach, they propose a powerful untargeted approach to explore what other changes in the brain may be occurring during this transition. They will use high-throughput sequencing technology and immunohistochemistry to uncover all genetic and specific proteomic changes in the brain, along with their relationship to GnIH, which occur during the transition to parental care. This project will build on previous work, and the data gathered will yield the most complete characterization and understanding of changes in neural transcription and translation reported to date in any vertebrate during the transition to parental care. All data and computer code will be made publicly available in established repositories and shared with the scientific community.

行为的重要变化随着向父母的过渡而发生。对于暴露父母护理的动物而言，养育后代成功涉及从侵略性和性行为过渡到更多的关怀和养育。但是，尚不清楚大脑如何带来这种过渡。在一个快速变化的世界中，了解环境如何影响大脑以及大脑如何影响行为过渡到父母护理，这将阐明环境变化最终如何影响所有组织的繁殖方式。在Drs之间的跨学科合作中。 Calisi-Rodríguez和MacManes将表征在岩石鸽子（哥伦比亚livia）中，在对父母护理行为的过程中，在岩石鸽子（哥伦比亚）中，基因表达和特定蛋白水平的变化，即下丘脑，垂体和性腺的变化。像大多数鸟类一样，摇滚鸽子孵化鸡蛋，但也是独一无二的，因为它们“乳酸”以喂养年轻人，显示出刻板印象的鸟类和哺乳动物的父母行为。这使鸽子成为理解过渡到育儿的神经生物学的潜在强大理论桥梁。博士。 Calisi-Rodríguez和MacManes将产生大型基因组数据集，并确定与父母护理重要阶段有关的关键基因。结果将具有广泛的潜在应用，包括用于保护或农业目的的圈养育种的管理，并为父母源粘结中神经缺陷的研究提供信息。此外，研究人员将开发并举办一项年度夏季计划“夏季城市科学”，以暴露高中生的低收入社区和代表性不足的背景，这些背景在科学中表现到一系列科学领域。这将为学生提供与教师以及他们的研究和实验室紧密合作的机会。 Calisi-Rodríguez和Macmanes Labs的学生都将有助于担任夏季城市科学的导师和讲师，以提高所有参与方的培训范围。 The overall wide objective of this program is to broaden participation in science, creating a more efficient and diverse workforce.Previous research has implemented specific horrmones that play a role in the maintenance of parental care behavior in vertebrates, including oxygen and vasopressin (avian homologs: Mesotocin and vasotocin), vasoactive intestinal peptide, and prolactin.但是，关于任何脊椎动物中的大脑过渡到父母护理行为的何时以及如何了解，这一知识对于理解介导父母护理的机制至关重要。这位主要研究者在担任NSF博士后研究员期间发现，下丘脑神经激素，促性腺激素抑制性激素（GNIH）在过渡到养生养殖期间鸟类和哺乳动物中含有GNIH的细胞的抽象显着变化。在这里，研究人员建议使用经典的后代去除和替换操作来扩展这种知识，以揭示GNIH过渡到父母护理行为的作用。除了这种有针对性的方法外，他们还提出了一种强大的非目标方法，以探索在此过渡过程中可能发生的其他变化。他们将使用高通量测序技术和免疫组织化学来发现大脑中的所有遗传和特定蛋白质组学变化，以及它们与GNIH的关系，这发生在过渡到父母护理期间。该项目将基于先前的工作，并且收集的数据将产生对迄今为止在过渡到父母护理期间任何脊椎动物报告的神经转录和翻译变化的最完整的表征和理解。所有数据和计算机代码将在既定的存储库中公开提供，并与科学界共享。