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The Paternally Expressed Gene Peg3 Regulates Sexual Experience-Dependent Preferences for Estrous Odors

Swaney, WT, Curley, JP, Champagne, FA and Keverne, EB (2008) The Paternally Expressed Gene Peg3 Regulates Sexual Experience-Dependent Preferences for Estrous Odors. BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE, 122 (5). pp. 963-973. ISSN 0735-7044

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Abstract

Sexual experience has marked and long-lasting effects on male behavior in mammals, regulating traits such as the anticipation and display of sexual behavior, aggression and olfaction. We conducted urine preference, habituation-dishabituation and partner choice tests with sexually experienced and naïve male mice and found that wild-type males acquire adaptively significant preferences for the odors of receptive, estrous females with sexual experience, and that these preferences are matched by changes in main olfactory system responses involving the piriform cortex, as indicated by c-Fos expression. We also report that these experiential effects are disrupted in male mice carrying a knockout of the imprinted gene Peg3. This paternally expressed gene regulates maternal care and offspring development, but we here report that Peg3 mutant males suffer a complex olfactory deficit that affects estrous odor preferences and the responses of the main olfactory system to such odors. Peg3 appears to have evolved to regulate the experience-dependent preference for receptive females, an adaptive trait that would enhance male reproductive success and so potentially increase paternal transmission of this paternally expressed gene.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: This article may not exactly replicate the final version published in the APA journal. It is not the copy of record.
Uncontrolled Keywords: 1109 Neurosciences, 1701 Psychology
Subjects: Q Science > QL Zoology
Divisions: Natural Sciences & Psychology (closed 31 Aug 19)
Publisher: AMER PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOC
Related URLs:
Date Deposited: 05 Jun 2015 14:08
Last Modified: 03 Sep 2021 20:46
DOI or ID number: 10.1037/a0012706
URI: https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/1368
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