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We've been studying the prairie voles and comparing those to the non-monogamous
and a-social montane and meadow voles to try to get an idea
of what are the physiological differences that would be responsible
for this behavior, and one difference
that we thought might be is that prairie voles would have more oxytocin and
more vasopressin than montane [voles] and that turns out not to be the case;
the real difference between the two species is the location and
quantity of the receptors that respond to it.
So a neuropeptide is sort of like a key;
a key doesn't do anything unless it goes into a lock,
and the lock is like a receptor,
so if you look in the brain of where those
locks are or where those receptors are,
you see a big difference between the ones who are monogamous and the ones who are not.
So prairie voles for example have high levels of these receptors in
reward areas of the brain, whereas the non-monogamous species don't,
and so we've also been looking at the genetic basis of that; why are the
receptors in different places?
And so we've identified the gene that encodes for the receptor for vasopressin,
and actually found region in the gene, just upstream of the gene in a
part of the gene called the promoter,
that determines where it's expressed and we find that there's variation
in the link of an element in that promoter
where by prairie voles who have longer stretches of this sequence have more receptors
than prairie voles who have shorter stretches of that sequence;
not only did they have more receptors, but they're more likely to bond,
they're more likely to be better fathers and they're more likely to engage
other individuals socially. So here's an example of where
a stretch of DNA,
a stretch of nucleotides (A, G, C and Ts) can vary across individuals
that can really produce a striking difference in their social behavioral traits,
so i think that this is an exciting finding that really makes a link between
genes, the brain and behavior