The Cheating Gene

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The Cheating Gene

• Molecular Basis of Monogamy

Presented by Franklin Jirón, Andrea Silva, Dejah
Urbanovitch
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Introduction

• There are two types of voles,
• small rodents, the mountain vole
• and prairie vole. Prairie voles
• have one mate their whole lives,
• while the mountain variety is
• polygamous. It has also been
• observed that after mating, the
• prairie voles hang out each
• other ONLY. Research has
• implicated that two small
• peptides, Vassopressin and
• Oxytocin are are involved in this
• behavior.

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First Experiment
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Testing Effects of Oxytocin and Vassopressin
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Faithful Voles

• Male Vassopressin
• Female Oxytocin

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Lets Compare Brains...

• Oxytocin and vassopressin are needed for pair
  bonding in males and females respectively.
• However both of these peptides are found in the
  brains of both types of Voles
• What makes them different?

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Experiment Using Promoter Bashing

• Promoters are the signals in DNA that tells the
  cell how to make of a certain protein, or in this
  case, receptor blockers
• Point to compare the promoter sites of the
  mountain and prairie voles.
• Comparisons made by using promoter bashing

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What Promoter Bashing is and What We Did With It

• Mutating different parts of the promoter in a
  test tube using chemicals.
• We can
• delete bits
• keep certain pieces
• See what happens when you use more than one copy
  of a certain enhancer sequences.
• Hope to find differences that cause monogamy.

• What we found
• Mutated promoters affected amount of peptide.
• Peptides were involved in pair bonding. therefore
  the promoter regions were ultimately responsible
  for pair bonding.
• How?? male prairie voles have a stronger V
  promoter , females stronger O promoter
• The promoter regions of mountain and prairie
  voles were structurally different.

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Nice HypothesisProve It!

• Lab promoters (for pair bonding) ? mountain voles
• The experiment was a success!
• The mountain vole showed signs of pair bonding.

Lab Promoters
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Monogamous Vole ? Promiscuous Mouse

• Mice have many lovers!!! (playas)
• Point we want to want to make promiscuous mice
  monogamous
• How?
• Knock out mouse promoter
• Knock in wanted promoter
• All done in birth cell
• Run altered mice through same experiment as the
  first one

Hypothesized results

• NOTE
• Possible way of inserting desired promoters is
  via a virus.
• Pros good intentions, easy, can be used anytime
  of life.
• Cons not 100 effective, detrimental if wrong

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Sum-up

• Cheating is controlled by genetics
• Future applications
• genetic alterations w/ the result in the
  extinction of adultery (of course, in the male
  species)
• open the horizon of effects of the genetic
  composition on the personality of a human
• Take this home
• If our genes control whether or not we cheat, do
  they control other aspects of ourselves.
  Furthermore, do genes determine whether or not we
  fall in love??