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Sex hormones—estrogen, testosterone and progesterone—control sex-specific behaviors in mice, including mating, aggression, and maternal behaviors. Yet what happens in the brain downstream of these master regulators is not well understood. New research suggests that the hormones switch individual genes on and off, and each gene influences a particular behavior in a modular fashion—one gene influences whether a mouse cares for her pups, for example, while another affects how receptive she is to sexual advances.
The findings, published today (February 2) in Cell, demonstrate that a complex social behavior can be deconstructed genetically. In addition, understanding sex-specific differences in the brain could help decipher why some neurological disorders, including autism and ADHD, have different rates of prevalence in males and females.
“It’s a very interesting paper,” ...
