Gene expression in brains from red jungle fowl (Gallus gallus) that differ in fear response

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The fear response of two different captive populations of red jungle fowl (rjf, Gallus gallus) was measured in three different tests, a ground predator test, an aerial predator test and a tonic immobility test. The two populations originated from Copenhagen zoo (Cop) and Götala research station (Got) but had been kept together for four generations. Earlier generations had a confirmed difference in fearfulness where the Cop birds exhibited a higher degree of fear response than Got birds (Håkansson and Jensen, 2005; Håkansson et al., 2007). The most and least fearful birds of each sex and population were identified and used in a gene expression study. The midbrain regions from the candidate birds were collected and RNA was isolated from each brain. The RNA was then reversed transcribed to cDNA which was used in a cDNA microarray experiment. 13 significantly differentially expressed genes were found between the fearful and non-fearful females. Among others were the neuroprotein Axin1, two potential DNA/RNA regulating proteins and an unknown transcript in the Quantitative Trait Locus 1(QTL 1), a well studied QTL on chromosome one with substantial effect on both behaviour and morphology during domestication (Schütz et al., 2002). This thesis succeeds in finding a difference in gene expression between fearful and non fearful female rjf but not between males. It fails in identifying gene expression di...