Characterizing the Molecular Response of Embryonic Zebra Finch to Acute Sound Playback

Author

• Saidat O. Adeniran-Obey Miss, Clemson UniversityFollow

Date of Award

5-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Biological Sciences

Committee Chair/Advisor

Dr. Julia George

Committee Member

Dr. William Baldwin

Committee Member

Dr. David Clayton

Committee Member

Dr. Subham Dasgupta

Committee Member

Dr. Christopher Parkinson

Abstract

Auditory stimuli are important cues that influence developmental plasticity in animals and are important for development and adaptation to an ever-changing environment. In the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata), there is evidence of adaptive developmental reprogramming in response to a prenatal ‘heat call’. Embryos exposed to this heat call exhibit changes in growth rate post-hatch, increased heat resistance, and enhanced reproductive success at maturity. However, it has long been assumed that embryonic zebra finches cannot respond to sound due to the immaturity of their auditory system. These findings raise the critical question of whether late-stage zebra finch embryos can, in fact, respond to sound. To address this question, preliminary data indicated differential brain gene expression following acute sound playbacks in late-stage embryonic zebra finches (embryonic day 13, 1 day prior to hatch). However, these results were confounded by a failure to account for sex in the experimental design. In this study, we generated a new population of embryonic zebra finches (balanced for sex) for an acute sound experiment and combined analyses of the preliminary and newly generated datasets to identify common molecular signatures of sound exposure across the two experiments using rank-rank hypergeometric overlap (RRHO) and DESeq2. We found that upregulated genes were enriched for cell cycle, gene regulation, and metabolic processes, while downregulated genes were enriched for neuronal and synapse-related terms. This result provides robust evidence of transcriptomic changes in the embryonic zebra finch brain in response to acute sound playback, suggesting that acute prenatal sound exposure may modulate early neural development.

Recommended Citation

Adeniran-Obey, Saidat O. Miss, "Characterizing the Molecular Response of Embryonic Zebra Finch to Acute Sound Playback" (2026). All Theses. 4776.
https://open.clemson.edu/all_theses/4776

Author ORCID Identifier

0000-0001-5805-8289