Abstract
Animals show behavioral traits that can collectively be called personality. We focus here on the role of the Prader-Willi Syndrom gene region in regulating personality behavior. It includes two clusters of tandem repeats coding for small nucleolar RNAs, SNORD115 and SNORD116. SNORD115 is known to regulate splicing of the serotonin receptor Ht2cr and SNORD116 is predicted to interact with the transcript of the chromatin regulator Ankrd11. We show that both snoRNA clusters display major copy number variation within and between populations, as well as in an inbred mouse strain and that this affects the expression of their specific target genes. Using a set of behavioral scores related to personality in populations of two species of wild mice, guinea pigs and humans, we find a strong correlation between the snoRNA copy number and these scores. Our results suggest that the SNORD clusters are major regulators of personality and correlated traits.
Impact statement Behavioral variation among individuals is regulated by a tandemly repetitive genetic region that can generate new length variants in every generation.
