Oxytocin receptor disruption in Avil-expressing cells results in blunted sociability and increased inter-male aggression.

ABSTRACT: Social behaviors are foundational to society and quality of life while social behavior extremes are core symptoms in a variety of psychopathologies and developmental disabilities. Oxytocin (OXT) is a neuroactive hormone that regulates social behaviors through its receptor (OXTR), with all previously identified social behavior effects attributed to the central nervous system, which has developmental origins in the neural tube. However, OXTR are also present in neural crest-derived tissue including sensory ganglia of the peripheral nervous system. Avil encodes for the actin-binding protein ADVILLIN, is expressed in neural crest-derived cells, and was therefore used as a target in this study to knock out OXTR expression in neural-crest derived cells. Here, we tested if OXTRs specifically expr

SUBMITTER: Tabbaa M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8631681 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature