ArticleScientific reports2019
Urotensin-related gene transcripts mark developmental emergence of the male forebrain vocal control system in songbirds.
Article in Scientific reports, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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3 citing papers in PubMed, 6 citations in OpenAlex.
- Molecular Disambiguation of Heart Rate Control by the Nucleus Ambiguus.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Cellular transcriptomics reveals evolutionary identities of songbird vocal circuits.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2021Article
- Acute social isolation alters neurogenomic state in songbird forebrain.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
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6 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
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Abstract
Songbirds communicate through learned vocalizations, using a forebrain circuit with convergent similarity to vocal-control circuitry in humans. This circuit is incomplete in female zebra finches, hence only males sing. We show that the UTS2B gene, encoding Urotensin-Related Peptide (URP), is uniquely expressed in a key pre-motor vocal nucleus (HVC), and specifically marks the neurons that form a male-specific projection that encodes timing features of learned song. UTS2B-expressing cells appear early in males, prior to projection formation, but are not observed in the female nucleus. We find no expression evidence for canonical receptors within the vocal circuit, suggesting either signalling to other brain regions via diffusion or transduction through other receptor systems. Urotensins have not previously been implicated in vocal control, but we find an annotation in Allen Human Brain Atlas of increased UTS2B expression within portions of human inferior frontal cortex implicated in human speech and singing. Thus UTS2B (URP) is a novel neural marker that may have conserved functions for vocal communication.
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