Professor Barry Keverne

Interests

Professor Keverne has long standing experience in behavioural neuroscience and has, in the past 10 years, brought molecular genetic techniques to focus on brain development and investigate how genetic perturbations of the brain influence brain function. In particular he has employed androgenetic and parthenogenetic chimeras to understand how the imprinted genome influences brain development and has extensively investigated the adult phenotype of mice carrying a mutation in paternally expressed genes. These studies have led to a co-adaptive evolutionary theory of brain and placental development through genomic imprinting. Pheromonal influences on behaviour and endocrine responses in mice is also a long standing interest and in recent years, together with Piers Emson, he has investigated pheromonal signalling via Erk and Akt phosphorylation to enhance vomeronasal neural regeneration survival.

(A) Western analysis of phosphorylated ERK signal in vomeronasal and CHO cells 10 min after application of urine (male and female urine adjusted to contain 5.0 µg/mL MUP protein, and artificial human urine contained with no MUP protein). C, control cells treated with PBS; MUP, mouse urinary protein fraction; M + L, MUP and ligand fractions applied together. Visualization of phosphorylated ERK immunoreactivity (B) and phosphorylated Akt immunoreactivity (C) in the vomeronasal cells following application of urine components for 10 min. The different urine fractions and components are shown below each panel. (D) Western analysis of phosphorylated ERK and Akt signal changes over time (8 h) in VNO cells after application of male or female urine (concentration adjusted to contain 5.0 µg/mL MUP protein), MUPs, MUPs + ligand and PBS control.
Click image to view full-size

Research Focus

Equipment

Affymetric genetic screening

Behavioural analysis

Confocal microscopy

Immunohistochemistry