know its role as a detector of pheromones well. While it is known that the organ is wired to the parts of the brain that govern reproductive behavior, its influence on gender-based behaviors was obscured in past studies because the surgical techniques used to ablate the organ flooded the nasal cavity with blood, disabling the olfactory system. To compare results from mice engineered to have a disabled vomeronasal organ, Dulac's group surgically removed the organ and ensured the nasal cavity was clear and the olfactory system operational.

"When we removed the vomeronasal organ surgically, we found the animal had the same phenotype" as the engineered mice, Dulac explained.

The new insight into the mechanisms that govern sexual behavior in animals gives science a new avenue to explore the molecular and physiological pathways that lead to differences in sexual behavior, according to Dulac. "Now we can really approach things from a mechanistic point of view," she said. "We can trace signaling events in the brain and see how brain areas controlling sex-specific behaviors are connected to each other."

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Contact: Jennifer Michalowski
michalow@hhmi.org
301-215-8576
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
5-Aug-2007


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