IMR Press / FBL / Volume 24 / Issue 6 / DOI: 10.2741/4769

Frontiers in Bioscience-Landmark (FBL) is published by IMR Press from Volume 26 Issue 5 (2021). Previous articles were published by another publisher on a subscription basis, and they are hosted by IMR Press on imrpress.com as a courtesy and upon agreement with Frontiers in Bioscience.

Review
Regulation of animal behavior by epigenetic regulators
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1 Department of Biological Chemistry, University of California, Irvine, 260 Aldrich Hall, Irvine, California, USA
2 Department of Applied Biology, Kyoto Institute of Technology, Matsugasaki, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, Japan
*Correspondence: myamaguc@kit.ac.jp (Masamitsu Yamaguchi)
Front. Biosci. (Landmark Ed) 2019, 24(6), 1071–1084; https://doi.org/10.2741/4769
Published: 1 March 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Cutting edge of insect biomedical science)
Abstract

Epigenetic regulation in animals induces rapid and long-lasting effects on gene expression in response to environmental changes that frequently affect animal behavior. In the last decade, accumulating studies have revealed how epigenetic regulation affects the behavior of animals, such as learning and memory, mating and courtship, the circadian sleep-wake cycle, and foraging/starvation-induced hyperactivity. In each section of this review, we discuss what we have learned from studies with mammals, mostly mouse models. We then highlight studies with Drosophila models to compare data with mouse models. Finally, we discuss several unanswered questions and future developments in this field.

Keywords
Review
Epigenetics
Animal behavior
Drosophila melanogaster
Mammals
Learning
Foraging
Mating
Circadian rhythm
Figures
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