Characterization of Aggressive Behavior and Analysis of Differential Gene Expression Involved in Fighting Fish (Betta splendens)

摘要

There is increasing appreciation that social experience can alter brain gene expression and behavior Previous studies showed that social experience leads to changes in brain gene expression brain function and social behavior However relatively there are still few studies that have examined complex behaviors and correlated them with gene expression in brain Here I use fighting fish Betta splendens to characterize the dynamic structure of the fight in male dyads and correlate the fight outcomes with gene expression changes on brains of winner and loser at both behavioral and molecular levels As the results of behavior analysis I discovered that mouth-locking behavior is the most critical among all the behaviors because other behavior (e g bite & strike and surface-breathing) are restricted during mouth-locking duration in male dyads Probably due to this restriction behavior of opponents in a fight pair synchronize with each other in both the behavioral and transcriptome analysis Furthermore the data of differential expression genes (DEGs) showed that all individuals from each social treatment were grouped together representing that the brain gene expression of winner and loser reflect their recent social experiences Besides we found that there are only 4 genes expressed differentially between winner and loser at just after fighting (End0) but 30 min later (End30) 29 genes were differentiated (FDR <0 05) showing that it needs to take some time for the internal response of winner and loser to be distinct In addition the expression patterns of some candidate genes for cognitive disorder were investigated and 23 autism associated genes were shown to belong to the group exhibiting low expression in loser This study provides a cornerstone for understanding of fighting itself in molecular level and how it can be used to identify of genes underlying specific behaviors and mechanisms involved in neuropathogeneis

獎項日期	2017 1月 9
原文	English
監督員	Tzen-Yuh Chiang (Supervisor)