title: Convergent evidence for the molecular basis of musical traits.
abstract: To obtain aggregate evidence for the molecular basis of musical abilities and the effects of music, we integrated gene-level data from 105 published studies across multiple species including humans, songbirds and several other animals and used a convergent evidence method to prioritize the top candidate genes. Several of the identified top candidate genes like EGR1, FOS, ARC, BDNF and DUSP1 are known to be activity-dependent immediate early genes that respond to sensory and motor stimuli in the brain. Several other top candidate genes like MAPK10, SNCA, ARHGAP24, TET2, UBE2D3, FAM13A and NUDT9 are located on chromosome 4q21-q24, on the candidate genomic region for music abilities in humans. Functional annotation analyses showed the enrichment of genes involved in functions like cognition, learning, memory, neuronal excitation and apoptosis, long-term potentiation and CDK5 signaling pathway. Interestingly, all these biological functions are known to be essential processes underlying learning and memory that are also fundamental for musical abilities including recognition and production of sound. In summary, our study prioritized top candidate genes related to musical traits.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Genetics, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 720, 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland.|Department of Biosciences, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 56, 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: Jaana
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Oikkonen
authors.affiliation: Department of Biosciences, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 56, 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: Päivi
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Onkamo
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Genetics, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 720, 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: Irma
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Järvelä
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Genetics, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 720, 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: Chakravarthi
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kanduri
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D030161:Avian Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D002894:Chromosomes, Human, Pair 4 / Q000235:genetics*; D006801:Humans; D009146:Music; D019655:Quantitative Trait, Heritable; D020308:Songbirds / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D030161:Avian Proteins