从野到温和：友好狐狸显示大脑区域的变化
由克里希纳·拉马努扬著，康奈尔纪事
研究驯服狐狸的神经学的科学家根据一份比较驯化，侵略和野生狐狸的大脑的新论文，发现了之前与侵略有关的大脑部分的变化。
这些变化发生在大脑基部的一个称为"通风下丘脑"的区域，已知这个区域会推动与能量使用有关的攻击，控制决策，对于小鼠的母性本能和社会行为很重要。
该研究于11月2日在期刊《时事生物学》上发表，利用了20世纪50年代后期在西伯利亚开始的经典实验，俄罗斯遗传学家注意到银狐农场的一些狐狸更亲切
然后，他们有选择地互相培育出更友善的狐狸，经过六代人的选择，他们有一堆小狗与人类互动。 幼狐也有动物驯化的物理特征，包括软耳和短鼻。
称 Markenscoff-Papadimitriou是农业和生命科学学院(CALS)的分子生物学和遗传学助理教授，是Rita Allen基金会的学者
该研究对各种环境压力如何在短时间内改变大脑结构有影响，Markenscoff-Papadimitriou 称。
在这项研究中，作者们决定把重点放在肠道下丘脑上，因为以前的研究已经确定了控制小鼠侵入的不同细胞类型。
该研究的作者与俄罗斯狐群科学家合作，收到了一批9个银狐脑：3个来自狐狸养成驯服，3个来自狐狸养成的类似具有侵略性特征和3个野狐。 大脑保存完好切得非常薄在通风下丘脑中，荧光RNA范围允许他们识别该地不同细胞类型的标记。
此前，其他科学家在与小鼠的实验中曾采用过一种名为opogenetics的技术，在实验中使用光线来激活特定神经元，在通风下丘脑中表达一种称为雌激素受体α的受体蛋白。
“如果你激活它们，鼠标将立即攻击另一只鼠标。” “我们假设这种特殊的细胞种类的丰度会有不同，我们确实发现，驯服狐狸下丘脑中表达神经元的雌激素受体较少，这些神经元是已知的入侵电路的一部分。”
现在，论文的作者们观察到了这种差异，接下来的步骤将涉及试图理解为什么驯化会导致通风下丘脑的这些变化，在这个工作之前，大脑区还没有很好地研究。
研究联合作者，伊利诺伊-乌尔巴纳-钱帕因大学基因组生物学和动物科学副教授安娜·库凯科娃(Anna Kukekova)可能探讨狐狸基因组不同部分的突变如何影响这些特定神经元的发育。
Jared Klein `25, Markenscoff-Papadimitriou实验室前研究技术员，合作作者包括兽医学院人口医学和诊断科学教授安德鲁·米勒；俄罗斯科学院细胞学和遗传研究所的阿纳斯塔西亚·卡尔拉莫娃，阿纳斯塔西亚·弗拉迪里莫娃和达里亚·谢佩列娃。
该研究由康奈尔的Vertebrate基因组学中心资助。
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From wild to mild: Friendly foxes show changes in brain region
By Krishna Ramanujan, Cornell Chronicle
Scientists studying the neurology of tame foxes identified changes in a part of the brain that has previously been associated with aggression, according to a new paper that compared the brains of domesticated, aggressive and wild foxes.
The changes occurred in an area at the base of the brain called ventromedial hypothalamus, which is known to drive aggression, control decisions related to energy use and is important for maternal instincts and social behaviors in mice.
The study, published Nov. 2 in the journal Current Biology, takes advantage of a classic experiment that started in Siberia in the late 1950s where Russian geneticists noticed some foxes on silver fox farms were friendlier toward human caretakers while others were more aggressive.
They then selectively bred friendlier foxes with each other and after only six generations of this selection, they had litters of puppies that interacted with humans. The cuddlier foxes also had physical features characteristic of animal domestication, including floppy ears and shorter snouts.
“We wanted to understand, what are the neurological underpinnings of these changes in behaviors that occurred very rapidly with this selection,” said Eirene Markenscoff-Papadimitriou, assistant professor of molecular biology and genetics in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS), a Rita Allen Foundation Scholar and the paper’s senior author.
The research has implications for how environmental pressures of all kinds can alter brain structure on short timescales, Markenscoff-Papadimitriou said.
In the study, the authors decided to focus on the ventromedial hypothalamus because previous research had already identified different cell types there that control aggression in mice.
Working with Russian fox colony scientists, the study’s authors received a shipment of nine silver fox brains: three from foxes bred to be tame, three from foxes similarly bred for aggressive traits and three wild foxes. The brains were preserved and very thinly sliced. In the ventromedial hypothalamus, a fluorescent RNA scope allowed them identify markers for different cell types there.
Previously, other scientists had employed a technique called optogenetics in experiments with mice where light was used to activate specific neurons that express a receptor protein called estrogen receptor alpha in the ventromedial hypothalamus.
“If you activate them, the mouse will immediately attack another mouse,” Markenscoff-Papadimitriou said. “We hypothesized that there would be differences in the abundance of this particular cell type, and we did find that the tame fox hypothalamus had fewer of these estrogen receptor expressing neurons, which are known to be part of the aggression circuit,” she said.
Now that the paper’s authors observed this difference, next steps will involve trying to understand why domestication leads to these changes in the ventromedial hypothalamus, a brain area has not been well studied before this work.
Study co-author Anna Kukekova, an associate professor of genomic biology and animal sciences at the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, may explore how mutations in different parts of the fox genome affect the development of these particular neurons.
Jared Klein ‘25, a former research technician in Markenscoff-Papadimitriou’s lab, is the paper’s first author. Co-authors include Andrew Miller, professor of population medicine and diagnostic sciences in the College of Veterinary Medicine; and Anastasiya Kharlamova, Anastasiya Vladirimova and Darya Shepeleva at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The study was funded by Cornell’s Center for Vertebrate Genomics.
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