Genes make red foxes see red or show affection toward humans
Nature Ecology & Evolution
2018년8월7일

Genes that may be associated with tame and aggressive behaviour in red foxes are revealed in a study published online this week in Nature Ecology & Evolution. Studying the red fox may help illuminate the genetic basis of social behaviour, including human behavioural disorders.
Red foxes have been bred successfully in captivity for over a century, and have adapted to the farm environment. Unlike their dog cousins, however, captive foxes generally exhibit fear or aggression toward humans. Beginning in the 1960s, a programme to experiment with domesticating farm-bred foxes established a tame strain of foxes, selected to be eager for human interaction, and an aggressive strain selected for behaving violently toward humans. A third population of foxes were not selected for any particular behaviour. These experimental populations provide a unique opportunity to determine the genetic basis of tame and aggressive behaviour.
Anna Kukekova, Guojie Zhang and colleagues sequence a reference red fox genome and analyse re-sequenced genomes of foxes from the tame, aggressive and conventionally farm-bred populations. They identify 103 genomic regions targeted by selection in the three fox strains, including several genes that in humans are associated with neurological disorders including autism spectrum disorder and bipolar disorder.
The authors find that a strong candidate for tame behaviour is the gene SorCS1, which regulates proteins involved in the communication between neurons. The authors conclude that the red fox provides a robust model for understanding the genetic basis of social behaviour, which is a long-standing question in evolutionary biology and human genetics.
doi: 10.1038/s41559-018-0611-6
리서치 하이라이트
-
3월4일
Environment: Reservoirs account for more than half of water storage variabilityNature
-
3월2일
Evolution: Neanderthals may have heard just like usNature Ecology & Evolution
-
3월2일
Geoscience: Earth’s atmosphere may return to low-levels of oxygen in one billion yearsNature Geoscience
-
2월26일
Environment: Shifting from small to medium plastic bottles could reduce PET wasteScientific Reports
-
2월24일
Environment: European forests more vulnerable to multiple threats as climate warmsNature Communications
-
2월11일
Environment: Global CFC-11 emissions in declineNature