Wednesday, January 21, 2004
|
Wednesday, January 21, 2004 |
|
“Monogamy in Voles?” Dr. Larry Young, associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences of the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience at Emory University, will indeed be speaking on true love in field mice (the more common term for a vole) as the opening speaker in Clayton College and State University's annual Biology Seminar Series, Thursday, Jan. 22, from 4:30 p.m. to 5:20 p.m., in room 10 of the University's Lecture Hall. Monogamy is actually extremely rare in mammals. Among the 4,000 or so mammalian species, only a few stay true to their mates ... and field mice aren’t generally one of the faithful few. However, Young and his colleagues at Emory have found a way to engender true love - or something close to it - in voles. Through viral gene therapy in the brains of test subjects, Young has found a way to make male voles more faithful to females and even more friendly to fellow males. “This week’s talk should be amazing,” said Dr. Greg Hampikian, associate professor of Biology at Clayton State and coordinator of the Biology Seminar Series. “Larry Young studies monogamy in voles. It seems that some species of voles are monogamous and other not. He has identified the area in the brain responsible, and even the gene. Now he has the gene on a viral vector and injects it into non-monogamous voles.” In addition to creating faithful mice, Young’s work has the potential for far wider applications, including shedding light on human bonding disorders such as autism. Young also suggests that his work might be relevant to humans’ inherent sociality. Young’s address at Clayton State is free and open to the public. For more information on the Biology Seminar Series, go to http://a-s.clayton.edu/hampikian/b4500/sp2004/default.htm.
|
