Rogers Forrest Dylan, Mereby Sara A, Kasper Anna M, Kim Sehee, Mallarino Ricardo, Peña Catherine Jensen
Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
Department of Molecular Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
bioRxiv. 2025 Jun 17:2025.06.17.658598. doi: 10.1101/2025.06.17.658598.
Male investment in offspring rearing through paternal care is rare among mammals and the neural mechanisms governing its emergence are poorly understood. We leveraged the natural paternal behavior of African striped mice () in combination with brain-wide cFos quantification, single-nucleus RNA-sequencing, viral-mediated gene manipulation, and environmental manipulation to dissect the neural basis of natural variation in male parenting. We find that socio-environmental conditions drive individual variation in male alloparenting such that post-weaning social isolation increases paternal care while social living in higher density groups increases infanticide. This natural variation in care corresponds to neural activity in the medial preoptic area and changes in correlated activity across brain regions. Within the medial preoptic area, expression of agouti signaling protein () in neurons is increased by group housing and is negatively associated with care, and overexpression of Agouti reduces care and enhances infanticide in previously tolerant animals. Naturalistic manipulations further reveal that integrates long-term housing conditions rather than food availability/hunger. Together, our results demonstrate that acts as a molecular integrator of socio-environmental information to drive variation in paternal care.
雄性哺乳动物通过父性照料对后代养育进行投资的情况较为罕见，且对其出现的神经机制了解甚少。我们利用非洲条纹小鼠的自然父性行为，结合全脑cFos定量分析、单核RNA测序、病毒介导的基因操作和环境操作，来剖析雄性育儿自然变异的神经基础。我们发现，社会环境条件驱动雄性异亲照料的个体差异，使得断奶后的社会隔离增加父性照料，而在高密度群体中群居则增加杀婴行为。这种照料方面的自然变异与内侧视前区的神经活动以及全脑区域相关活动的变化相对应。在内侧视前区，群居会增加神经元中刺鼠信号蛋白（Agouti）的表达，且该表达与照料呈负相关，在先前耐受性良好的动物中，过表达Agouti会减少照料并增强杀婴行为。自然主义操作进一步揭示，Agouti整合的是长期居住条件而非食物供应/饥饿情况。总之，我们的结果表明，Agouti作为社会环境信息的分子整合者，驱动父性照料的变异。
