MIRA: The biological basis of paternal care in stickleback fish

在此输入文本，它是您的应用程序的新摘要信息。此部分不得超过30行文本。 摘要保持不变。 父母的照顾对父母和子女的健康都至关重要，但人们对分子底物如何在大脑区域和神经元回路中作用以改变父母的行为知之甚少，这一差距在父亲照顾方面尤其严重，即父亲的照顾行为。这项拟议的研究利用了单一物种(三刺刺鱼)中父系照顾的自然变异，以揭示脊椎动物父系照顾的生物学基础。目前的父亲照顾模式是双亲照顾，这使得很难理清父母的行为。三刺刺鱼是一种很有前途的父亲照料的新模式，因为父亲完全负责提供照料。此外，与CARE相关的分子机制在脊椎动物中高度保守，刺背基因组小而紧凑，有越来越多的功能工具可用于研究它们。这项提议的目标是定义导致单一物种内父亲照顾差异的分子元素，并描述参与这种行为差异的神经生物学途径。有两个目标：1)识别导致父亲照顾差异的基因，并测试它们的功能；2)确定神经肽信号调节父亲照顾的方式。该项目结合了整体和单细胞水平的脑基因表达谱，病毒介导的转基因实验，以建立催产素和精氨酸加压素信号的机制和药物操作。这项拟议的工作提供了一种创新的解决方案，通过使用一种强大的新父亲养育模式，并利用单一物种内父亲照料的自然变异，来剖析父亲照料的生物学基础这一挑战。

Enter the text here that is the new abstract information for your application. This section must be no longer than 30 lines of text. The Abstract is unchanged. Parental care is critical to the health of both parents and offspring, yet little is known about how molecular substrates act within brain areas and neuronal circuits to alter parental behavior, and this gap is especially wide for paternal care, i.e. the care-giving behavior of fathers. The proposed research capitalizes on natural variation in paternal care within a single species (threespined stickleback fish) to uncover the biological basis of paternal care in vertebrates. The current models for paternal care have biparental care, which makes it difficult to disentangle the behavior of mothers and fathers. Three-spined stickleback fish are a promising new model for paternal care because fathers are solely responsible for providing care. Moreover, the molecular mechanisms related to care are deeply conserved in vertebrates, the stickleback genome is small and compact and there are a growing number of functional tools available to study them. The goals of this proposal are to define the molecular elements responsible for differences in paternal care within a single species and to characterize the neurobiological pathways involved in such variation in behavior. There are two objectives: 1) Identify genes that contribute to differences in paternal care and test their function; 2) Define the ways in which neuropeptide signaling regulates paternal care. The project combines brain gene expression profiling at the bulk and single cell level, viral mediated transgenesis experiments to establish mechanism and pharmacological manipulations of oxytocin and arginine vasopressin signaling. The proposed work offers an innovative solution to the challenge of dissecting the biological basis of paternal care by using a powerful new model for fathering, and by capitalizing on natural variation in paternal care within a single species.