Gene expression underlying enhanced, steroid-dependent auditory sensitivity of hair cell epithelium in a vocal fish. Fergus, D., J., Feng, N., Y., & Bass, A., H. BMC Genomics, 16(1):782, BioMed Central, 10, 2015.
Gene expression underlying enhanced, steroid-dependent auditory sensitivity of hair cell epithelium in a vocal fish [pdf]Paper  Gene expression underlying enhanced, steroid-dependent auditory sensitivity of hair cell epithelium in a vocal fish [link]Website  doi  abstract   bibtex   
Successful animal communication depends on a receiver’s ability to detect a sender’s signal. Exemplars of adaptive sender-receiver coupling include acoustic communication, often important in the context of seasonal reproduction. During the reproductive summer season, both male and female midshipman fish (Porichthys notatus) exhibit similar increases in the steroid-dependent frequency sensitivity of the saccule, the main auditory division of the inner ear. This form of auditory plasticity enhances detection of the higher frequency components of the multi-harmonic, long-duration advertisement calls produced repetitively by males during summer nights of peak vocal and spawning activity. The molecular basis of this seasonal auditory plasticity has not been fully resolved. Here, we utilize an unbiased transcriptomic RNA sequencing approach to identify differentially expressed transcripts within the saccule’s hair cell epithelium of reproductive summer and non-reproductive winter fish.

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