Abstract
Elucidating the genetic mechanisms that underlie complex adaptive phenotypes is a central problem in evolutionary biology. For behavioral biologists, the ability to link variation in gene expression to the occurrence of specific behavioral traits has long been a largely unobtainable goal. Social interactions with conspecifics represent a fundamental component of the behavior of most animal species. Although several studies of mammals have attempted to uncover the genetic bases for social relationships using a candidate gene approach, none have attempted more comprehensive, transcriptome-based analyses using high throughout sequencing. As a first step toward improved understanding of the genetic underpinnings of mammalian sociality, we generated a reference transcriptome for the colonial tuco-tuco (Ctenomys sociabilis), a social species of subterranean rodent that is endemic to southwestern Argentina. Specifically, we analyzed over 500 million Illumina sequencing reads derived from the hippocampi of 10 colonial tuco-tucos housed in captivity under a variety of social conditions. The resulting reference transcriptome provides a critical tool for future studies aimed at exploring relationships between social environment and gene expression in this non-model species of social mammal.
Highlights
Understanding the genetic bases for complex adaptive phenotypes is a fundamental problem in evolutionary biology
Given the critical yet complex role that genes play in shaping phenotypic variation, efforts to understand the genetic underpinnings of social interactions are of considerable general interest to behavioral biologists
Comparing our sequence reads to established E. coli sequences suggested that,0.1% of the remaining reads were bacterial in origin and these sequences were removed from the data set
Summary
Understanding the genetic bases for complex adaptive phenotypes is a fundamental problem in evolutionary biology. Relationships between behavioral variation and patterns of gene expression have been reported for multiple species of insects [10,11] and birds [9,12,13] Among mammals, such analyses have been used to link aggressive tendencies in mice to differential expression of Gprotein coupled neuropeptide receptors such as GABA [14] as well as the loci coding for the proteins septin [15] and calcineurin [16]. These studies underscore the potential for analyses of gene expression to elucidate the genetic underpinnings for animal social interactions
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