Meeting Abstract
Steroids are molecular messengers that regulate a variety of bodily functions, including behavioral responses to stimuli. Classically, steroids have been thought to act in the body through so-called genomic mechanisms, which can take hours to weeks to influence behavior. More “rapid” non-genomic mechanisms of steroids have since been discovered, which can modulate behaviors in seconds to minutes. However, research surrounding rapid effects of steroids on sensory systems is lacking. We took advantage of the sex pheromone system in zebrafish to investigate rapid effects of androgens on olfactory sensitivity. In goldfish, we have observed that testosterone (T) rapidly modulates the male approach response to the postovulatory pheromone prostaglandin F2α (PGF2α), but the same rapid modulation has not been investigated in male zebrafish, who also approach the pheromone. We pre-treated mature male zebrafish with vehicle, T, or 11-ketotestosterone (11-KT; the most potent androgen in fish brains) for 40 minutes, and then immediately measured their responses to vehicle and then PGF2α being pumped into their tanks. Initial data suggests that T-treated fish spend more time near the pheromone, indicating that T may rapidly modulate this response in zebrafish.
