Profile

I lead a small team of scientists (Gabi, Elizabeth, Laura and Maria) who are all interested in how genes affect behaviour. We focus on a special type of behaviour called “instinct“. These tend to be social in nature and occur unconsciously and without much learning. Examples of the instincts we study are:

Sexual behaviour, what causes males and females to mate with each other?
Dominance behaviour, what causes males to fight with each other?
Suckling behaviour, how do newborn babies know how and where to find milk from their mother’s breast?
“Fight or flight” behaviour, how does fear work and why are we afraid of some things but not others?

Its very difficult to study these instincts in humans, so instead we tend to watch (and make videos) of mice interacting. We then work out what the signals are that cause each behaviour, and also what genes are involved in making the mice respond to these signals. A lot of mouse instincts are caused by “pheromones”  – which are special chemical odours (smells) that animals use to communicate with each other. So we focus on the noses of mice, to try and find out how these smells go from the nose to the brain, and then from the brain to cause the behaviour. It turns out that many mouse pheromones are found in pee (which is pretty gross), so we also look for the genes that make pheromones or  release them into the bladder.

We don’t yet know for sure whether humans have pheromones. (If we do, they are probably not found in our pee!) but even if we don’t – we are learning a lot about the genes that make our own instincts work by studying instincts in mice. For example, the part of the mouse brain that is most active when mice detect cat pheromones  is also active in humans that are really frightened. And the part of the brain that processes sex pheromones in mice, is also very active in humans when they have sex. We hope to learn how these natural behaviours work from the genes involved, so then we can find out why the go wrong in some behavioural disorders (like schizophrenia or phobias)

Other parts of our work involve studying the differences between males and females in their noses or brains and trying to find the genes that control the differences. For example, one question we are currently trying to answer is: do boys smell things the same way as girls do? This is actually a really difficult problem to solve!

Finally, because we spend a lot of time watching mice socialize with each other, my team have learned a lot about recognizing when they are stressed or unhappy. So we also do research into ways to keep them as happy as possible (for example, we know that mice actually like dirty cages more than clean ones, so we don’t clean them out as often as we used to). We consider this a very important part of our work, because the priviledge of working with these amazing animals comes with an ethical responsibility towards them.

This weird looking structure is the part of a mouse’s nose that detects pheromones. Its called the vomeronasal organ (or VNO). The white crescent is where he pheromones enter and the blue crescent are the nerves that send the signals to the brain.

I do spend quite a lot of time helping the members of my lab with their work, which is a really rewarding part of the job. But the great thing about being a research scientist is that no two days are ever the same.

For example, some days I just read papers to learn more about the exciting research my friends are doing, or maybe talk to my colleagues in Brazil or the USA,  via Skype, to discuss an experiment we are working on together.

Other days I may spend an afternoon timing how long it takes mice find a square of chocolate hidden in their cage (that is a great test to find out how well they can smell – they usually find it really quickly!)

Some days I may spend a lot of time at my computer drinking coffee and analyzing some genes from different mice, to see if I can spot differences that might explain their behaviour. A lot of genome research is computer based now so it really helps if you have computer skills as well as laboratory skills.

I even spent a day, once,  making a YouTube video with come colleagues about our work discovering why mice are afraid of cats. It was a lot of fun, even though we are clearly not cut out for a media career!