Assignment #3

This assignment was to summarize Distinct physiological and behavioural functions for parental alleles of imprinted Grb10 by Garfield et al. published in Letters to Nature 2011. Enjoy!

Garfield Paper Summary

Garfield et al. discuss the first known imprinted gene (Grb10) that is shown to implicate regulation of social behaviour. To show this, the researchers created a knock out Grb10 mouse model that proved Grb10 was entirely paternally derived in the CNS proper, and maternally derived in the ventricular layers of the brain. Their studies showed that the brain and kidneys were similar in size to that of wildtype mice, but the pups entire bodies and liver were enlarged. Expression of the paternal allele in the CNS of M/+ and +/P type endogenous analysis indicated that expression of Grb10 was established in embryogenesis and maintained until adulthood. However, in +/P models, there was no evidence of brain overgrowth, even though maternal Grb10 had been shown to be a regulator of fetal growth. This indicated that paternal genes were the imprinted genes regulating things such as exploratory behaviour and circadian rhythm. Other behavioural changes observed was that the M/+ mice were more passive in social behaviour than the +/P mice. These studies have shown that differences in genome representation between social groups create different behavioural patterns and change tolerance. This is indicative that Grb10 expression could be related to levels of serotonin and dopamine metabolites, since they both show a strong correlation with dominant/submissive behaviours. This paper demonstrated how two parental alleles of Grb10 have distinctive patterns of imprinted expression and are found especially on different tissues with little to none overlap. I think this paper was considered broad enough interest to be reported in the news because it is both scientific and eludes to sociality. To know that at least part of our behavioural patterns and personality is genomically derived sparks quite an interest to most people. 

Amanda

email: manda147@interchange.ubc.ca | Student Number: 92681071