Graduation Year

2020

Date of Submission

12-2019

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Biology

Reader 1

Findley Finseth

Reader 2

Melissa Coleman

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Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Abstract

Understanding the genetic basis of behavior is a major goal in neurobiology. Here, we use zebra finch to investigate how changes in gene expression contribute to pair bonding behavior. To this end, we extracted brain tissue from pair-bonded and naïve zebra finch females. Brain tissue was sampled from two regions – the lower striatum, due to its previously described association with mating and social behaviors, and the general forebrain, a control tissue. We used deep, next generation sequencing of RNA (i.e., RNA-Seq) to determine the sequence of all the genes expressed in the various tissues and treatments. We then used bioinformatic tools to assess genes differentially expressed in pair bonded vs. naïve birds for each tissue type. Results showed three major findings: 1) there is a strong signal of pair bonding status on gene expression patterns, 2) the lower striatum has a greater shift in gene expression due to pair bonding than control tissues, and 3) some genes that were differentially expressed in the lower striatum were those that were involved in steroid biosynthesis.

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