Song control nucleus transcriptome

Carolina Frankl-Vilches, Meng-Ching Ko, Falk Dittrich, Antje Bakker, Judith Kammerlander

The improvement of bird song performance in the presence of sex hormones is a gradual process that lasts for weeks. In female songbirds that develop a male-like song after testosterone treatment, we are studying short- and long-term effects of sex hormones on gene expression patterns of the forebrain song control nuclei. Using bioinformatic analyses of microarray and RNA-sequencing studies, we expect to deliver a more comprehensive picture of the fundamental gene regulation networks that are induced by sex hormones and elucidate the dynamics of the molecular and cellular changes.