Researchers have identified a group of genes that induces differences in the developing brains of male and female roundworms and triggers the initiation of puberty, a genetic pathway that may have the same function in controlling the timing of sexual maturation in humans. The study, led by Columbia University scientists, offers new evidence for direct genetic effects in sex-based differences in neural development and provides a foundation to attempt to understand how men's and women's brains are wired and how they work. The research was published January 1, 2019 in eLife, an open-access journal founded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), the Max Planck Society, and the Wellcome Trust. The article is titled “Timing Mechanism of Sexually Dimorphic Nervous System Differentiation.” Scientists have long known that puberty is accompanied by substantial changes in the brain characterized by the activation of neurons that produce hormonal signals. But what causes the brain to start releasing the hormones that switch on puberty has remained elusive. "In this paper we show that a pathway of regulatory genes acts within specific neurons to induce anatomical and functional differences in the male versus female brain," said lead study author Oliver Hobert, PhD, Professor in Columbia's Department of Biological Sciences and a HHMI investigator. "Remarkably, we found that each member of this pathway is conserved between worms and humans, indicating that we have perhaps uncovered a general principle for how sexual brain differences in the brain are genetically encoded." For their study, the researchers worked with the transparent roundworm C. elegans, the first multicellular organism to have its genome sequenced.Login Or Register To Read Full Story