Charles Blatti

TL;DR: This work shows that song behaviour engages gene regulatory networks in the zebra finch brain, altering the expression of long non-coding RNAs, microRNAs, transcription factors and their targets and shows evidence for rapid molecular evolution in the songbird lineage of genes that are regulated during song experience.

TL;DR: There is no single road map to eusociality; independent evolutionary transitions in sociality have independent genetic underpinnings and these transitions do have similar general features, including an increase in constrained protein evolution accompanied by increases in the potential for gene regulation and decreases in diversity and abundance of transposable elements.

TL;DR: A thermodynamics-based model to predict gene expression driven by any DNA sequence, as a function of transcription factor concentrations and their DNA-binding specificities is developed, and is the first publicly available program for simultaneously modeling the regulatory activities of a given set of sequences.

TL;DR: A dual mechanism for the diversity of behaviorally regulated genes across different brain regions in vivo is proposed, finding that singing was associated with differential regulation of about 10% of all genes in the avian genome that came in several waves across time.