Mating system and avpr1a promoter variation in primates
- 22 April 2008
- journal article
- Published by The Royal Society in Biology Letters
- Vol. 4 (4), 375-378
- https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2008.0122
Abstract
It has been suggested that primate mating and social behaviours may be influenced by variation in promoter region repetitive DNA of the vasopressin receptor 1a gene ( avpr1a ). We show that male mating behaviour does not covary in a simple way with promoter repetitive DNA in 12 Old World primates. We found that one microsatellite (−553 bp upstream) was present in all species, irrespective of their behaviour. By contrast, two microsatellites (−3956 and −3625 bp upstream) were present only in some species, yet this variation did not correlate with behaviour. These findings agree with a recent comparative analysis of voles and show that the variation in repetitive DNA in the avpr1a promoter region does not generally explain variation in male mating behaviour. Phylogenetic analysis revealed a GAGTA motif that has been independently deleted three times and involved in another larger deletion. Importantly, the presence/absence of this GAGTA motif leads to changes in predicted transcription factor-binding sites. Given the repeated loss of this motif, we speculate that it might be of functional relevance. We suggest that such non-repetitive variation, either in indels or in sequence variation, are likely to be important in explaining interspecific variation in avpr1a expression.Keywords
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