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NEURO - Dissertações de mestrado

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http://hdl.handle.net/10400.12/6378

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Browsing NEURO - Dissertações de mestrado by Field of Science and Technology (FOS) "Ciências Naturais::Ciências da Terra e do Ambiente"

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  • Indirect genetic effects on social behavior and dna methylation pattern in Zebrafish
    Publication . Maeva Pinget; Teles, Magda
    The social environment, more particularly the genetic makeup of conspecifics, may influence individuals' social behavior, a henomenon known as indirect genetic effects (IGEs). Previous work has demonstrated how genetic variation in the social environment affects the behavioral output of zebrafish oxytocin receptor mutants (OXTR). It was found that the interaction between an individual's genotype and the genotype of its conspecifics affects social behaviors, indicating that the social environment can either rescue or promote phenotypes associated with specific genes. Nevertheless, the mechanisms behind this behavioral plasticity remain poorly understood. In the present study, we used the same experimental paradigm published in Ribeiro et al. (2020) of growing fish of different genotypes in different environmental conditions (1 wild-type in a group of 4 OXTR mutants; 1 mutant in a group of 4 wild-types and the respective controls, a group of 5 mutants and a group of 5 wildtypes) to explore the mechanism that underlies the interaction between genes and environment. After growing under these particular conditions, group behavioral analysis was conducted, and the forebrain of all individuals was collected for nanopore sequencing to quest for differential methylation patterns in the different experimental groups. Our results indicate that group genotypic composition significantly influences social interactions depending on the individual’s genotype and the genotype of the conspecifics. These genotype interactions affected not only individual behavior but also group dynamics. Analysis of genomic DNA revealed a strong signal of a differentially methylated CpG island in the fish forebrain, aligned with the behavioral data. These findings suggest that the social environment can drive phenotypic changes and that epigenetic marks, such as DNA methylation, may be one of the underlying mechanisms mediating these effects.
    2024Master thesis Embargoed access Show more