Japanese scientists have uncovered the principle of "couples" in sync with genetic and neural activity by watching "fishfighting".

Siamese Betta.Image Source: human nature when Muhammad Ali and Joe Fraser fight each other in the ring, few people think about the genetic changes in their brains.the battle of the century between Ali and Fraser was taken in 1971, but a recent new study on bettas shows that genes in the brains of fish begin to turn on and off in a coordinated manner as they fight.we don't know what these genes are doing and how they affect fighting, but similar changes may be occurring in the human brain.recently, a new study published in PLoS Genetics tries to solve this long-standing puzzle.Alison bell, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, said: "this study may well demonstrate the way in which social interaction can deeply affect the human body."how animals (including humans) coordinate their behavior remains a mystery.Hans Hofmann, an evolutionary social neuroscientist at the University of Texas at Austin, said: "animals are good at mating and fighting, but we don't know how they do it."when Norihiro Okada, a molecular biologist at Beili University, Japan, first saw Siamese bettas on television, he realized that these animals could help solve the mystery.the size of a goldfish, Siamese bettas are native to Thailand. After being bred, their fins and tails become very large and their colors are more brilliant.aquariums tend to keep these pets called "bettas" separately.because of their territorial awareness, they can fight for more than an hour, including attacking, biting and chasing.they even lock each other's jaws in fish wrestling.Okada and his colleagues recorded more than ten hours of fighting video between 17 pairs of fish, and then analyzed the situation and time of each fight.the researchers wrote in the paper: "the longer the fighting time, the more synchronous the behavior of these fish.they take longer than we think."the researchers also determined that the fighting between fish was" carefully designed. ". for example, in a fight that lasts about 80 minutes, there seems to be an "agreed" break between each action. that is, the fight will be upgraded every 5 to 10 minutes. The fighting fish will lock each other's mandibles. This strategy can prevent the opponent from breathing, so it will test who can persist longer. then, they breathe apart for a short time, and the wheel battle continues. Image Source: PLoS Genetics researchers found that this collaborative behavior also occurs at the molecular level. after 20 minutes of fighting, five pairs of fish died. the researchers compared which genes were turned on in the fish brain before and after the fight. 60 minutes later, they did the same test on five other groups of fish. Image Source: PLoS Genetics researchers found that at 20 minutes, some of the same genes, the "intermediate early genes" that activate other genes, were active in each fish. at 60 minutes, hundreds of genes were co expressed. the opening time of a specific gene is specific to each pair of fish, indicating that the interaction between the fish pair is coordinating a series of changes. Hofmann said: "the degree of synchronization of these fish is amazing. "image source: PLoS Genetics Okada does not know what these genes do or how they affect the fighting process. he believes that weaker bettas need to assess their opponent's strength and withdraw from the fight before injury, and genes may play a role. but Hofmann and bell speculated that these genes have a greater impact on fish fighting with other fish in the future. last year, two research teams reported in cell that brain activity between interacting mammals is synchronous. one team studied bats flying in dark rooms and avoiding collisions, while the other team tested the advantages of mice in small arenas. in both studies, the longer the animals interacted, the more synchronized their brain activity was. Image Source: weizhe Hong, a neuroscientist at UCLA and the author of one of the cell's papers, said the new study "adds a new dimension" to such work because it now appears that genes and neural activity are synchronized. their findings undoubtedly raise many exciting questions for future research. Bell said that what we observe in fish may also apply to humans. for example, a study in the 1980s showed that couples who lived together for a long time tended to have more and more similar facial features, which we often call "husband and wife appearance.". ↑ Okada of Huang Bo and his wife said that this may also be a signal of convergence of gene activity. article link: the official account is hosted by the microbiology resource center and the big data center of the Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 2019, Wen Wen TOP101. reversed , which is a simple disease. It is a simple disease to lose weight or reverse the condition. 2. 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