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Research abstract
Summary: Dr. Baker's full research abstract will be available soon.
Dr. Baker studies the genetic and neural circuits underlying innate behaviors, using mating behavior of the fruit fly as a model. His group's previous studies led them to propose that a sex determination regulatory gene, fruitless (fru), is responsible for building the potential for male sexual behavior into the central nervous system during development.
His lab continues to study courtship behavior, with the long-term aims of understanding (1) how the potential for male courtship behavior is established in the central nervous system during development and (2) how the cells subserving male courtship behavior function together to ensure the ordered manifestation of the events comprising this behavior. About 2 percent of the cells in the brain express the male-specific form of fru and these cells appear to comprise a set of neuronal circuits that are required for all, or nearly all, aspects of male sexual behavior, from the initial recognition of a potential mate, through copulation.
Dr. Baker believes the key to understanding how the potential for a complex behavior is built into the central nervous system will be to go from the gene (fru) to the properties of the cells in which it functions, and from those cells to behavior. Thus his lab is focused on the developmental origins of these neurons, the characteristics that distinguish them, and the roles they play in adult male sexual behavior.
Last updated: August 15, 2008
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