Environment

Siddharth Ramakrishnan

What is environment?• a : the complex of physical, chemical, and biotic factors (as climate, soil,

and living things) that act upon an organism or an ecological community and ultimately determine its form and survival b : the aggregate of social and cultural conditions that influence the life of an individual or community

What do you think of when we use the word environment?

What environment?

• You are what you eat• You are where you live• You are where you developed

In Utero

Development

Effects of Prenatal Stress

• The number of stress receptors in the brain and their activation profiles may be determined in the embryo

• So how you respond as an adult to stress may be determined quite early on

Effect of Prenatal Stress

Neonatal Environment

Effects of Neonatal stress/nutrition

What about light, day, night, cycles?

Experimental Design

•Collect embryos daily

•N =12 pairs at start

•Served as LD controls throughout experiment

LD Control LD SD SD LD

0h 0800h 1800h 2400h0h 0800h 2400h

0h 0800h 2400h

16L:8D12 days 33 days 20 days

•Collect embryos daily

•When egg laying stopped, N =6 males sacrificed

•GSI determined

•TN-GnRH neuron electrophysiology recorded

•Collect embryos daily

•When egg laying reached control levels, N =6 males sacrificed

•GSI determined

•TN-GnRH neuron electrophysiology recorded

Circadian rhythms and hormones

Urban vs. Rural vs. Virtual

Micro and nanoenvironments

Epigenetics

Epigenetics

Effect of Hox genes

• Transcription factors

Developing brain regions

• Low drag materials

• Compound lenses

• What about cotton candy?

The Inside is larger than the Outside

Social

• Social environment is very important– Fish that change sex when other fish act like it is

male/female; queen bee; naked mole rat roles; monogamy• How does social environment shape us?• How is this different now?• How do social networking sites alter society?• Twitter campaign in the middle east• Elections? Democracy?• What about friendship – has the word been redefined?• What is privacy?

Social regulation of GnRH• Cichlid fish (Haplochromis burtoni)• Social factors growth and reproduction

How our environment affects us

• Development• Adaptation• Habituation/Facilitation• Social Responses• Evolution

So what we do to our environment, is in turn altering us ,

subtly, slowly but definitely