A group of graduate students from the Graduate School of Life Sciences, Tohoku University, and researchers from Uppsala University and the University of Porto decided to identify a group of genes with significant changes in expression levels between wild and domestic rabbits. Successful.
Domestication of animals is also called "artificial selection" and is an evolutionary process that rapidly causes peculiar trait changes such as human nostalgia by human hands.Rabbits, in particular, have been domesticated relatively recently (after about 1400 years ago) and are thought to have evolved their brains and behaviors in a short period of time.
The researchers considered that changes in gene expression occurred during the domestication process of rabbits, resulting in changes in brain development and behavior, and comprehensively expressed genes in the brains of wild and domestic rabbits. Analyzed.As a result, he succeeded in identifying a group of genes whose expression levels in the brain were significantly changed between the two.
First, in domestic rabbits, increased expression of dopamine-related genes was observed in the amygdala.The expression of dopamine-related genes in the amygdala is involved in the fear response of animals, suggesting that it may be related to the nostalgia of domestic rabbits.
In the hippocampus of domestic rabbits, a marked decrease in the expression of cilia-related genes was observed.Cilia-related genes are also involved in hippocampal neurogenesis and may be associated with structural changes in the brain.
In this way, this result, which examined the changes in gene expression behind rapid brain changes and behavioral evolution using rabbits with a relatively short history of domestication, is one of the important themes in evolutionary biology. However, it can be said to provide suggestions for elucidating the genetic basis of changes associated with domestication of animals.
