TY - JOUR
T1 - The structure of behavioral variation within a genotype
AU - Werkhoven, Zachary
AU - Bravin, Alyssa
AU - Skutt-Kakaria, Kyobi
AU - Reimers, Pablo
AU - Pallares, Luisa F.
AU - Ayroles, Julien
AU - De Bivort, Benjamin L.
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Ed Soucy, Brett Graham, Adam Bercu, and Joel Greenwood of Harvard’s CBS Neuroengi-neering core for help fabricating our instruments. Julie Peng helped with the genomic experiments. Gordon Berman generously consulted on the analysis and sharing data. Timothy Sackton provided insightful guidance on the RNAseq modeling and KEGG enrichment analysis. Joshua Shaevitz kindly shared code and expertise for the unsupervised analysis imaging rig. Tanya Wolff and Gerry Rubin kindly shared most of the Gal4 lines from the circuit screen. James Crall, Jennifer Erickson, Danylo Lavren-tovich, and Shradda Lall provided helpful feedback on the manuscript. ZW and KSK were supported by NSF Graduate Research Fellowships DGE-1144152 and #2013170544; JFA was supported by the NIH under grant no. GM124881. BdB was supported by a Sloan Research Fellowship, a Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship Award, a Smith Family Odyssey Award, a Harvard/MIT Basic Neuroscience Grant, the NSF under grant no. IOS-1557913, and the NIH under grant no. MH119092. We also thank the reviewers for providing thorough, helpful feedback on a hefty manuscript in the midst of a pandemic.
Publisher Copyright:
© Werkhoven et al.
PY - 2021/10
Y1 - 2021/10
N2 - Individual animals vary in their behaviors. This is true even when they share the same genotype and were reared in the same environment. Clusters of covarying behaviors constitute behavioral syndromes, and an individual's position along such axes of covariation is a representation of their personality. Despite these conceptual frameworks, the structure of behavioral covariation within a genotype is essentially uncharacterized and its mechanistic origins unknown. Passing hundreds of inbred Drosophila individuals through an experimental pipeline that captured hundreds of behavioral measures, we found sparse but significant correlations among small sets of behaviors. Thus, the space of behavioral variation has many independent dimensions. Manipulating the physiology of the brain, and specific neural populations, altered specific correlations. We also observed that variation in gene expression can predict an individual's position on some behavioral axes. This work represents the first steps in understanding the biological mechanisms determining the structure of behavioral variation within a genotype.
AB - Individual animals vary in their behaviors. This is true even when they share the same genotype and were reared in the same environment. Clusters of covarying behaviors constitute behavioral syndromes, and an individual's position along such axes of covariation is a representation of their personality. Despite these conceptual frameworks, the structure of behavioral covariation within a genotype is essentially uncharacterized and its mechanistic origins unknown. Passing hundreds of inbred Drosophila individuals through an experimental pipeline that captured hundreds of behavioral measures, we found sparse but significant correlations among small sets of behaviors. Thus, the space of behavioral variation has many independent dimensions. Manipulating the physiology of the brain, and specific neural populations, altered specific correlations. We also observed that variation in gene expression can predict an individual's position on some behavioral axes. This work represents the first steps in understanding the biological mechanisms determining the structure of behavioral variation within a genotype.
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U2 - 10.7554/eLife.64988
DO - 10.7554/eLife.64988
M3 - Article
C2 - 34664550
AN - SCOPUS:85118556778
SN - 2050-084X
VL - 10
JO - eLife
JF - eLife
M1 - e64988
ER -