April 14th & 21st Madeline

SNACKS & Who is Who: James Ryan 

BEHAVIOR TOPIC # 8:

Behavior paper:

Sapolsky (2005) The Influence of Social Hierarchy on Primate Health. Science 308:648-652.

Genomics paper:

Tung et al (2012) Social environment is associated with gene regulatory
variation in the rhesus macaque immune system. PNAS 109:6490–6495.

Questions for reading (students must turn in sets 4 throughout semester):

  1. Terms and definitions
  2. What is the hypothesis of this study and how might it relate to our society?
  3. How does what have learned previously about social insects support their hypothesis?
  4. What percent of tissue composition, glucocorticoid signaling and DNA methylation patterns contributed to the effect of rank-gene association on the expression level of ‘rank genes’? Which results most strongly support the hypothesis?
  5. Did their hypothesis hold true for individuals who had shifted rank? How do they show that it does or doesn’t?
  6. Pick a graph of group of graphs (from main paper or SI) and summarize its meaning and relevance to the paper?
  7. What implications does this study have for our society? Did you find it convincing? Why or why not?