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| Thierry Lints obtained his M.S. from The University of Auckland, New Zealand, in 1987 and his PhD from the University of Melbourne, Australia, in 1993. There he worked with Richard Harvey at The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, studying vertebrate heart and visceral mesoderm specification during early embryogenesis. His initial post-doctoral work with Jane Dodd and Tom Jessell at Columbia University dealt with signaling mechanisms patterning the neural tube. In 1997 he switched fields to songbird neuroethology joining Fernando Nottebohm's lab at The Rockefeller University. Out of the ashes rose a close collaboration with Ofer Tchenichovski that migrated to The City College of New York (2002 until 2005) and that continues to the present. In the fall of 2005, Thierry joined the Department of Biology at Texas A&M University. |
Thierry Lints 3258 TAMU Office: Lab: Fax: 979-845-2891 |
| Research Interests
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Tchernichovski, O., Lints, T.J., Deregnaucourt, S., Cimenser, A., Mitra, P.P. (2004). Studying the song development process: rationale and methods. Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. 1016, 348-363. Haesler, S., Wada, K., Nshdejan, A., Ropers, H.H., Morrisey, E., Lints, ,T.J., Jarvis, E.D. and Scharff, C. (2004). FoxP2 expression in avian vocal learners and non-learners. J. Neurosci. 24, 3164-3175. Tchernichovski, O., Mitra, P.P., Lints, T.J. and Nottebohm, F. (2001). Dynamics of the vocal imitation process: how a zebra finch learns its song. Science 291: 2564-2569. Dale, J.K., Vesque, C., Lints, T.J., Sampath, T.K., Furley, A., Dodd, J. and Placzek, M. (1997). Cooperation of BMP7 and SHH in the induction of forebrain ventral midline cells by prechordal mesoderm. Cell 90: 257-269. Lints, T.J., Hartley, L., Parsons, L.M. and Harvey, R.P. (1996). Mesoderm-specific expression of the divergent homeobox gene Hlx during murine embryogenesis. Developmental Dynamics 205: 457-470. Ericson, J., Muhr, J., Placzek, M., Lints, T.J., Jessell, T.M. and Edlund, T. (1995). Sonic hedgehog induces the differentiation of ventral forebrain neurons: a common signal for ventral patterning within the neural tube. Cell 81: 747-756. Lints, T.J., Parsons, L., Hartley, L., Lyons, I. and Harvey, R.P. (1993). NKx-2.5: A novel murine homeobox gene expressed in early heart progenitor cells and their myogenic descendants. Development 119: 419-431. |
We are exploring the molecular basis of a complex, learned, natural behavior by studying song imitation in birds (in particular, zebra finches). Like human infant speech, many birdsongs are mastered through a developmental learning process requiring intensive vocal practice. The prodigious output of juvenile song allows us to chart, in real time, the imitative progress of the bird based on highly quantifiable acoustic features of the sounds produced. The central problem we are grappling with is: How does developmental and experience-driven regulation of gene expression map on to trajectories of vocal change? The approaches we are taking include: 1) microarray analysis of transcriptional profiles of song nuclei after the imitative process has been triggered by a single song training session, 2) the development of whole brain 3D maps to describe the spatial dynamics of metabolic and transcriptional activity during vocal development, and 3) perturbation of the imitation process by RNA interference and other means. 