Honours Research Scholarship
Ms Mace Neve and Professor Simon Easteal
A one-year scholarship of $10,000 has been awarded to Ms Mace Neve for a study entitled The role of oxytocin in social/sexual behaviour: a study of naturally occurring variation in the human oxytocin receptor gene. The project is being undertaken at the John Curtin School of Medical Research (JCSMR) at the Australian National University (ANU) under the supervision of Professor Simon Easteal, Leader Predictive Medicine Group and Deputy Director JCSMR.
Ms Neve is looking at DNA differences in the gene that encodes a protein called OXTR and studying the role of oxytocin in reproductive and social behaviour in humans and consequent health effects.
The following information has been extracted from Ms Neve's application for funding:
This project will look at DNA differences in the gene that encodes a protein called OXTR, which is the key to the way oxytocin works in the body. It will examine how these DNA differences contribute to reproductive and social behaviour in humans.
This study will use human DNA samples taken from the cheeks of volunteers instead of animal models. Using humans to research the role of OXTR avoids problems of comparing other species (usually rodents) to humans as their sexual and social behaviour are usually very different. Participants have provided information that will be used to identify the effect of genetic variation on their reproductive and sexual behaviour.
Studying this naturally occurring genetic variation provides an alternative to animal studies as a way of understanding how biological processes contribute to these important aspects of human behaviour, and possibly more broadly to general health.
Understanding the influence of genetic variation on key aspects of human social and sexual behaviour is of considerable intrinsic interest and should lead to better understanding and characterisation of individual variation and of specific disorders. It also has the potential to lead to new approaches to treating sexual dysfunction and behavioural disorders (e.g. the potential pharmaceutical use of oxytocin to treat social dysfunction in autism). The broader significance of the work derives from the importance of the quality and nature of intimate and social relationships on other aspects of health. Understanding the biological processes associated with these relationships may have broad significance in the management of health and the prevention of disease.
Ms Mace Neve
A standard approach to studying the function of genes is to create a mouse strain with the human gene inserted. Once this strain is created the gene can be knockout, up or down regulated and manipulated in many ways to examine its functioning. Mice with null or OXTR deficient mutations have been engineered. Similar animal models could be used to test the affects of variation in OXTR by genetically engineering mice with the desired polymorphisms and observing the difference in phenotypes.
This project will use human DNA samples from volunteers rather than genetically engineered rodents in a study of naturally occurring variation in the human OXTR gene. This provides an alternative to experimental manipulation of animals as a way of investigating the role of OXTR and this will avoid the problem of species differences in biological processes and behaviour.