ArticlePLoS biology2019
Transcriptional regulatory divergence underpinning species-specific learned vocalization in songbirds.
Article in PLoS biology, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
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19 citing papers in PubMed, 32 citations in OpenAlex.
- Epigenetic signatures of migratory orientation in a songbird hybrid zone.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2026Article
- Genetic Differences in Purple Finch (Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- A species rules syntax model accurately organizes birdsong syllables into songs.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- The Temporal Organization of Learned Vocal Behavior Is Predicted by Species Rather Than Experience.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Divergence in expression of a singing-related neuroplasticity gene in the brains of 2 Ficedula flycatchers and their hybrids.G3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2025Article
- Expansion of learning capacity elicited by interspecific hybridization.Science advances · 2024Article
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- A predisposed motor bias shapes individuality in vocal learning.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Non-additive genetic components contribute significantly to population-wide gene expression variation.Cell genomics · 2024Article
- Gene regulation and speciation in a migratory divide between songbirds.Nature communications · 2024Article
- A chromosome-level reference genome and pangenome for barn swallow population genomics.Cell reports · 2023Article
- Spatiotemporal Regulation of a Single Adaptively Evolving Trans-Regulatory Element Contributes to Spermatogenetic Expression Divergence in Drosophila.Molecular biology and evolution · 2022Article
- Comparative Genomics and Evolution of Avian Specialized Traits.Current genomics · 2021Review
- Nine Levels of Explanation : A Proposed Expansion of Tinbergen's Four-Level Framework for Understanding the Causes of Behavior.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2021Article
- Seasonal regulation of singing-driven gene expression associated with song plasticity in the canary, an open-ended vocal learner.Molecular brain · 2021Article
- Article
- Mechanisms of species diversity in birdsong learning.PLoS biology · 2019Article
- Temporal Profile of Brain Gene Expression After Prey Catching Conditioning in an Anuran Amphibian.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2019Article
- A test of the mechanistic process behind the convergent agonistic character displacement hypothesis.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
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Authors and funding
11 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Learning of most motor skills is constrained in a species-specific manner. However, the proximate mechanisms underlying species-specific learned behaviors remain poorly understood. Songbirds acquire species-specific songs through learning, which is hypothesized to depend on species-specific patterns of gene expression in functionally specialized brain regions for vocal learning and production, called song nuclei. Here, we leveraged two closely related songbird species, zebra finch, owl finch, and their interspecific first-generation (F1) hybrids, to relate transcriptional regulatory divergence between species with the production of species-specific songs. We quantified genome-wide gene expression in both species and compared this with allele-specific expression in F1 hybrids to identify genes whose expression in song nuclei is regulated by species divergence in either cis- or trans-regulation. We found that divergence in transcriptional regulation altered the expression of approximately 10% of total transcribed genes and was linked to differential gene expression between the two species. Furthermore, trans-regulatory changes were more prevalent than cis-regulatory and were associated with synaptic formation and transmission in song nucleus RA, the avian analog of the mammalian laryngeal motor cortex. We identified brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) as an upstream mediator of trans-regulated genes in RA, with a significant correlation between individual variation in BDNF expression level and species-specific song phenotypes in F1 hybrids. This was supported by the fact that the pharmacological overactivation of BDNF receptors altered the expression of its trans-regulated genes in the RA, thus disrupting the learned song structures of adult zebra finch songs at the acoustic and sequence levels. These results demonstrate functional neurogenetic associations between divergence in region-specific transcriptional regulation and species-specific learned behaviors.
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