(Below N is a link to NCBI taxonomic web page and E link to ESTHER at designed phylum.) > cellular organisms: NE > Eukaryota: NE > Opisthokonta: NE > Metazoa: NE > Eumetazoa: NE > Bilateria: NE > Deuterostomia: NE > Chordata: NE > Craniata: NE > Vertebrata: NE > Gnathostomata: NE > Teleostomi: NE > Euteleostomi: NE > Sarcopterygii: NE > Dipnotetrapodomorpha: NE > Tetrapoda: NE > Amniota: NE > Sauropsida: NE > Sauria: NE > Archelosauria: NE > Archosauria: NE > Dinosauria: NE > Saurischia: NE > Theropoda: NE > Coelurosauria: NE > Aves: NE > Neognathae: NE > Passeriformes: NE > Passeroidea: NE > Estrildidae: NE > Estrildinae: NE > Taeniopygia: NE > Taeniopygia guttata: NE
LegendThis sequence has been compared to family alignement (MSA) red => minority aminoacid blue => majority aminoacid color intensity => conservation rate title => sequence position(MSA position)aminoacid rate Catalytic site Catalytic site in the MSA MFWRSAGRALRALALLQLQPPARTVPLPPRGPAACYGTSVTSAKIQVNGV YLHYQQTGEGSHAVLLLPGMLGSGQTDFGPQLKSMNKQLFTIVAWDPRGY GKSIPPSRDFPPDFFERDAKDAVDLMQALKFEKFSLLGWSDGGITALIAA AKYPNLIHKLVVWGANASVTQEDVRIYSGIRDVSKWSEKVRKPLEELYGH KYFAETCEAWVDGISRFAENSDGNICQQLLPFIKCPTFIIHGEKDPLVPQ AHAEYIHKHIKGSRLLLMPEGKHNLHLRFAKDFNREVENFLC
The zebra finch is an important model organism in several fields with unique relevance to human neuroscience. Like other songbirds, the zebra finch communicates through learned vocalizations, an ability otherwise documented only in humans and a few other animals and lacking in the chicken-the only bird with a sequenced genome until now. Here we present a structural, functional and comparative analysis of the genome sequence of the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata), which is a songbird belonging to the large avian order Passeriformes. We find that the overall structures of the genomes are similar in zebra finch and chicken, but they differ in many intrachromosomal rearrangements, lineage-specific gene family expansions, the number of long-terminal-repeat-based retrotransposons, and mechanisms of sex chromosome dosage compensation. We show that song behaviour engages gene regulatory networks in the zebra finch brain, altering the expression of long non-coding RNAs, microRNAs, transcription factors and their targets. We also show evidence for rapid molecular evolution in the songbird lineage of genes that are regulated during song experience. These results indicate an active involvement of the genome in neural processes underlying vocal communication and identify potential genetic substrates for the evolution and regulation of this behaviour.
Songbirds have one of the most accessible neural systems for the study of brain mechanisms of behavior. However, neuroethological studies in songbirds have been limited by the lack of high-throughput molecular resources and gene-manipulation tools. To overcome these limitations, we constructed 21 regular, normalized, and subtracted full-length cDNA libraries from brains of zebra finches in 57 developmental and behavioral conditions in an attempt to clone as much of the brain transcriptome as possible. From these libraries, approximately 14,000 transcripts were isolated, representing an estimated 4,738 genes. With the cDNAs, we created a hierarchically organized transcriptome database and a large-scale songbird brain cDNA microarray. We used the arrays to reveal a set of 33 genes that are regulated in forebrain vocal nuclei by singing behavior. These genes clustered into four anatomical and six temporal expression patterns. Their functions spanned a large range of cellular and molecular categories, from signal transduction, trafficking, and structural, to synaptically released molecules. With the full-length cDNAs and a lentiviral vector system, we were able to overexpress, in vocal nuclei, proteins of representative singing-regulated genes in the absence of singing. This publicly accessible resource http:\/\/songbirdtranscriptome.net can now be used to study molecular neuroethological mechanisms of behavior.