RUI: Collaborative Research: Maternal Transitions in a Mouth-Brooding Cichlid

母性护理在许多动物中已经演变，但大多数关于潜在神经机制的研究只在哺乳动物身上进行。这个项目利用丰富的研究机构来研究慈鱼Astatotilapia burtoni的母口孵化。该物种提供了一个独立进化的强大的母体护理实例。在这里，控制母体行为的神经回路必须与调节进食的神经回路密切互动，以便允许自愿饥饿，以便不会在体重显著下降的情况下吃掉幼崽。拟议中的实验将在路易斯安那州立大学里德学院进行，为顶尖文科院校的本科生和EPSCoR学院(LSU)的本科生和研究生提供研究和交流机会。了解喂养机制和大脑区域在多大程度上被用于产妇护理，将有助于我们对这一重要适应性社会行为的演变的总体理解。除了解决产妇护理的演变，这项研究可能会影响与代谢和喂养障碍相关的人类健康研究，因为它可能会发现允许这些回路解耦的新机制。这项合作研究项目旨在了解从自我促进行为到促进后代的行为转换的分子和生理机制，这是强大的产妇护理所必需的。伯顿拟罗非鱼是社会基因组学和综合动物行为的长期模型。利用免疫组织化学，研究人员和他们的学生将量化特定神经元类型的即刻早期基因表达，并分析细胞类型的大小或数量变化。利用跨裂解方法，他们将量化候选脑核和外周信号系统中的基因表达差异。最后，来自视前区神经元的活体神经记录将被用来确定在产妇护理的不同阶段对鸡蛋/鱼苗与食物相关刺激的生理敏感性。充分描述慈鱼母脑与摄食调节的相互作用是两位研究人员的长期合作议程，并使他们能够利用同时描述基因表达和功能研究的协同作用。里德学院和路易斯安那州立大学的学生将参与这项研究的方方面面。这个项目包括一个数学-生物合作项目，让学生开发R脚本来询问不同大脑区域和不同女性群体中不同基因表达网络之间的相似性和差异。所有产生的脚本和算法将在网上托管，通过出版物传播，并由学生在科学会议上展示。

Maternal care has evolved in many animals, yet most research on the underlying neural mechanisms has been carried out only in mammals. This project capitalizes on that rich body of research to study maternal mouth-brooding in the cichlid fish Astatotilapia burtoni. This species offers an independently-evolved instance of robust maternal care. Here, the neural circuits regulating maternal behavior must interact intimately with the neural circuits regulating feeding to allow voluntary starvation in order not to eat the young despite significant loss of body mass. The proposed experiments will be conducted at Reed College & Louisiana State University, providing research and exchange opportunities between undergraduates at a top liberal arts institution and both undergraduate and graduate students from an EPSCoR institution (LSU). Understanding the degree to which mechanisms and brain regions for feeding have been co-opted for maternal care will inform our general understanding of the evolution of this important adaptive social behavior. In addition to addressing the evolution of maternal care, this research may impact human health research related to metabolic and feeding disorders as it may uncover novel mechanisms that allow decoupling of these circuits.This collaborative research project aims to understand the molecular and physiological mechanisms that underlie the behavioral switch from self-promoting behavior to offspring-promoting behavior that is required for robust maternal care. Astatotilapia burtoni has been a long standing model for sociogenomics and integrative animal behavior. Using immunohistochemistry, researchers and their students will quantify immediate-early gene expression in specific neuronal types across the "maternal brain" as well as assay cell types for changes in size or number. Using transriptomic approaches, they will quantify gene expression differences in candidate brain nuclei as well as peripheral signaling systems. Finally, in vivo neural recordings from neurons in the preoptic area will be used to determine physiological sensitivity to egg/fry versus food-related stimuli during different stages of maternal care. Fully describing the cichlid maternal brain as it interacts with feeding regulation is the long term collaborative agenda of the two researchers and allows them to capitalize on the synergy of simultaneously describing gene expression and functional studies. Students from Reed College and Louisiana State University will be involved in all aspects of this research. This project includes a math-biology collaboration to have students develop R scripts to interrogate similarity and differences between different gene expression networks in the different brain regions and different female groups. All resulting scripts and algorithms will be hosted online, disseminated through publication and presented by students at scientific conferences.