Advanced Course on Genes, Circuits and Behavior

Advanced Course on Genes and Behavior
October 29 to November 10, 2012
National Centre for Biological Sciences, TIFR, Bangalore

Teachers:
Jean-Francois Ferveur, Universite de Bourgogne, France
Jonathan Flint, Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, UK
Ralph Greenspan, University of California, San Diego, USA
Gaiti Hasan, NCBS-TIFR, Bangalore
Laurent Keller, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
Ksenija Marinkovic, University of California, San Diego, USA

Genetic studies of diseases that affect human behavior suggest that while the underlying cause maybe genetic, environmental factors are hugely influential in disease manifestation and progression. To understand genetic vs environmental contributions to behavior it is necessary to study it in a context where both can be manipulated. The proposed course will begin by a series of lectures, paper discussion and experiments that will investigate genetic paradigms of behavior in a relatively simple genetic model - Drosophila melanogaster. This will be followed by lectures on social insects (specifically ants) where environment plays a strong role in deciding behavioral outputs. The second half of the course will go onto studies of human behavior and nervous system function. The entire workshop is planned in the context of evolutionary development of the nervous system and behavior.

The course will run over two weeks and will consist of an intensive set of lectures, discussions and research paper presentations by registered participants.


Organisers :
Gaiti Hasan, NCBS-TIFR, Bangalore
Ralph Greenspan, University of California, San Diego, USA
 

Please click here for the course schedule


Background reading for Ralph Greenspan lectures

• McGrath , PT (2012) Varieties of behavioral natural variation. Current Opinion in Neurobiology vol. 23
• Greenspan RJ (2009) Selection, gene interaction, and flexible gene networks. Cold Spring Harb Symp Quant Biol. 74: 131-138                   
• Greenspan RJ. (2008) The origins of behavioral genetics. Curr Biol. 18: R192-R198. 
• Arendt D. (2008) The evolution of cell types in animals: emerging principles from molecular studies.Nat Rev Genet. 9: 868-882.
• Katz PS. (2011) Neural mechanisms underlying the evolvability of behaviour. Philos Trans R SocLond B Biol Sci. 366: 2086-2099.                

Background reading for Jean-Francois Ferveur lectures

• Abuin L, Bargeton B, Ulbrich MH, Isacoff EY, Kellenberger S, Benton R (2011) Functional architecture of olfactory ionotropic glutamate receptors. Neuron 69(1):44-60.          
• Kwon JY, Dahanukar A, Weiss LA, Carlson JR (2011) Molecular and cellular organization of the taste system in the Drosophila larva. J Neurosci. 31(43):15300-9.                  
• Griffith LC, Ejima A (2009) Courtship learning in Drosophila melanogaster: diverse plasticity of a reproductive behavior. LearnMem. 16(12):743-50. Review.                      
• Albre J, Liénard MA, Sirey TM, Schmidt S, Tooman LK, Carraher C, Greenwood DR, Löfstedt C, Newcomb RD (2012) Sex pheromone evolution is associated with differential regulation of the same desaturase gene in two genera of leaf roller moths. PLoS Genet. 8(1):e1002489.
• Bousquet F, Nojima T, Houot B, Chauvel I, Chaudy S, Dupas S, Yamamoto D, Ferveur JF (2012) Expression of a desaturasegene, desat1, in neural and nonneural tissues separately affects perception and emission of sexpheromones in Drosophila. Proc NatlAcadSci U S A. 109(1):249-54.

Background reading for Laurent Keller lectures

• Wenseleers T, Van Oystaeyen A.2011Unusual modes of reproduction in social insects: shedding light on the evolutionaryparadox of sex.Bioessays. 33, 27-37                   
• Floreano, D. & Keller, L. 2010. Evolution of adaptive behaviour in robots by means of natural selection.PloS Biology, 8, e1000292. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000292.               
• Crespi, B. J. 2001. Selection: Units and Levels. eLS. DOI: 10.1038/npg.els.0001712.

Background reading for Jonathan  Flint lectures

• Schizophrenia as a complex trait: evidence from a meta-analysis of twin studies. Sullivan, P. Kendler, K.S., Neale, M.C. Archives of General Psychiatry 2003, 60:1187-1192.        
• The future of genetic studies of complex human diseases. Risch N and Merikangas K 1996 Science 273: 1516- 1517    
• The molecular genetics of the 22q11-associated schizophrenia. Karayiorgou M, Gogos JA. Brain Res Mol Brain Res. 2004 Dec 20;132(2):95-104.                      
• Caspi, A., Sugden, K., Moffitt, T.E., Taylor, A., Craig, I.W., Harrington, H., McClay, J., Mill, J., Martin, J. et al. (2003). Influence of life stress on depression: moderation by a polymorphism in the 5-HTT gene. Science 301:386–389.
• Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium (2007). Genome-wide association study of 14,000 cases of seven common diseases and 3,000 shared controls. Nature 447:661–678.  
• Narrowing the boundaries of the genetic architecture of schizophrenia. Wray NR, Visscher PM. Schizophr Bull. 2010 Jan;36(1):14-23. Epub 2009 Dec 8                     
• Lander, E.S. and Botstein, D. (1989). Mapping Mendelian factors underlying quantitative traits using RFLP linkage maps. Genetics 121:185–199.                          
• Nadeau, J.H., Singer, J.B., Matin, A., and Lander, E.S. (2000). Analysing complex genetic traits with chromosome substitution strains. Nat Genet 24:221–225.
• Flint, J., Valdar, W., Shifman, S., and Mott, R. (2005). Strategies for mapping and cloning quantitative trait genes in rodents. Nat Rev Genet 6:271–286.                  
• Flint, J. and Mackay, T.F. (2009). Genetic architecture of quantitative traits in mice, fl ies, and humans. Genome Res 19:723–733.                    

             
Background reading for Ksenija Marinkovic lectures

• An Introduction to the Event-Related Potential Technique, Chapter 1, Luck, Bradford, 2005
• Dale, A.M., and Halgren, E. (2001).Spatiotemporal mapping of brain activity by integration of multiple imaging modalities.Curr Op Neurobiol 11:202-208                     
• Cohen, D. and Halgren, E. (2004).Magnetoencephalography.Encyclopedia of Neuroscience (Ed. Adelman, Smith), Elsevier.       Binder, J.R., Desai, R.H., Graves, W.W., and Conant, L.L. (2009). Where is the semantic system? A critical review and meta-analysis of 120 functional neuroimaging studies.  Cerebral Cortex 19:2767-2796.        
• Kutas, M. and Federmeier, K. (2011). Thirty years and counting: Finding meaning in the N400 component of the event-related brain potential (ERP). Annu. Rev. Psychol. 62:621-647.                                                                                                  
• Marinkovic, K., Baldwin, S., Courtney, M.G., Witzel, T., Dale, A.M., and Halgren, E. (2011). Right hemisphere has the last laugh: Neural dynamics of joke appreciation. Cogn Affect BehavNeurosci 11:113-130.                                      
• Paus, T. (2001) Primate anterior cingulate cortex: Where motor control drive and cognition interface. Nat Reviews Neuroscience 2:417-424                         
• Green, A.E., Munafo M.R, DeYoung, C.G., Fossella, J.A., Fan, J. and Gray, J. (2008). Using genetic data in cognitive neuroscience: From growing pains to genuine insights.  Nat Rev Neurosci 9:710-720.

The course will be over by the evening of  Friday November 9, 2012

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