Campagnols of meadows are attachment models. Monogamous throughout their lives, staying as a couple, the partners share educational and housewives, protect themselves from external aggressions, console themselves in the event of a hard blow. A rarity among mammals. Quite the opposite of their cousins campagnols in the mountains, inveterate breadcrumbers, making fun of their young and a puff. Almost thirty years ago, scientists have shown that the two species, extremely close, differ mainly by the density of oxytocin receptors, known as the hormone of attachment, and to another neuropeptide, vasopressin. So much so that Microtus Ochrogaster, the scientific name of the species of meadows, has become the main animal model for the study of the role of oxytocin, all the more precious as the importance of the same hormone was asserted in the same hormone human social and affective relations.
or, in A study published in the Revue Neuron , on January 27, American researchers come to disturb this pretty painting. The team led by Nirao Shah and Devanand Manoli, professors of psychiatry respectively at the University of Stanford and at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), showed that our sweet rodents could form emotional ties even in the absence of oxytocin receptors. An unexpected and even “disconcerting” discovery admits Nirao Shah.
inactivation of genes
The research program pursued essentially methodological goals. It was a question of using the CRISPR-CAS9 molecular scissors to inactivate genes not in mice or rats, now practical, but for the first time in Campagnols. New tools and new protocols had been developed, the embryos had been isolated, genetically modified, then replaced in mothers. The researchers therefore hoped to find the results observed by drug methods, namely that a Campagnol without oxytocin lost its attachment links.
and flop! They found that the animals thus modified continued to form pairs, that the females led their pregnancy in the long term and that the couples took care of the little ones. Just breastfeeding was partially altered. “I still remember our stupor, adds Devanand Manoli. But three different mutations in the oxytocin receiver made in three distinct laboratories led to the same result. This convinced us.”
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