Kirrel3 homophilic adhesion function is required for male-directed aggression and vomeronasal acuity to urine chemosignals
Sydney Fearnley, Neelima Vaddadi, Emilie Dumontier, Jean-François Cloutier · 2026
Read Kirrel3 homophilic adhesion function is required for male-directed aggression and vomeronasal acuity to urine chemosignals by Sydney Fearnley, Neelima Vaddadi, Emilie Dumontier, Jean-François Cloutier (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13593424.txt.
Description
Sydney Fearnley and co-authors test in a 2026 mouse study what breaks when a single sticky spot on the Kirrel3 adhesion protein is swapped out. The protein glues smell-sensing axons into tidy balls in the accessory smell system, which steers social behavior. Mice with the swap form scrambled maps, like mice missing the gene entirely.
Males with the swap attacked other males less, and females lacked maternal aggression while still retrieving and nesting pups normally. Both sexes needed stronger urine scents to notice them, yet other smells stayed sharp. Social novelty, oddly, survived the swap though not the full deletion.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Sydney Fearnley, Neelima Vaddadi, Emilie Dumontier, Jean-François Cloutier |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 45 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |