Whitney O, Soderstrom K, Johnson F
Department of Psychology and Program in Neuroscience, Florida State University, 32306-1270, Tallahassee, FL, USA.
Brain Res Mol Brain Res. 2000 Sep 15;80(2):279-90. doi: 10.1016/s0169-328x(00)00178-9.
In the male zebra finch, highly variable juvenile song and stereotyped adult song induce mRNA expression of the immediate early gene zenk in telencephalon. However, the functional consequences of this behavior-driven gene expression remain unknown. Here we characterize the developmental expression of zenk mRNA and protein in two forebrain song regions (HVC, the higher vocal center, and RA, the robust nucleus of the archistriatum). In HVC, singing results in similar percentages of cells producing zenk mRNA and zenk protein at different stages of vocal development. Similarly, song behavior at all stages of vocal development induces a comparable percentage of RA cells expressing zenk mRNA. However, the percentage of RA zenk immunoreactive cells is low during early vocal learning, increasing only as the vocal pattern matures. Early induction of a stereotyped vocal pattern in juvenile birds is associated with increased zenk immunoreactivity in RA, indicating that it is the form of the behavior (and not the age of the bird) that correlates with changes in zenk immunoreactivity. Together, our findings reveal a previously unrecognized relationship between behavioral development and post-transcriptional gene regulation.
在雄性斑胸草雀中，高度可变的幼鸟鸣声和刻板的成年鸟鸣声可诱导端脑中即刻早期基因zenk的mRNA表达。然而，这种行为驱动的基因表达的功能后果仍不清楚。在这里，我们描述了zenk mRNA和蛋白质在两个前脑鸣唱区域（HVC，即高级发声中枢，和RA，即古纹状体粗核）中的发育表达情况。在HVC中，在发声发育的不同阶段，鸣叫导致产生zenk mRNA和zenk蛋白质的细胞百分比相似。同样，在发声发育的所有阶段，鸣叫行为诱导表达zenk mRNA的RA细胞百分比相当。然而，在早期发声学习期间，RA中zenk免疫反应性细胞的百分比很低，仅在发声模式成熟时才增加。幼鸟中刻板发声模式的早期诱导与RA中zenk免疫反应性增加有关，这表明与zenk免疫反应性变化相关的是行为的形式（而非鸟的年龄）。总之，我们的研究结果揭示了行为发育与转录后基因调控之间以前未被认识到的关系。
