David Crews

Crews, David
Ashbel Smith Professor of Integrative Biology, and Psychology

E-mail: crews@mail.utexas.edu

Website: http://www.utexas.edu/research/crewslab/

Main Office: PAT 30
Phone: 512 471-1113

Alternate Office: PAT 34
Phone: 512 475-6738

Mailing Address:
The University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station C0930
2415 Speedway
Austin, TX 78712-1095

Graduate Students:

  • Dias, Brian
  • Porter, Raymond
  • Ramsey, Mary
  • Sanderson, Nicholas
  • Shoemaker, Christina

    • Research Summary:
       see section bio for more info
    One of my research programs focuses on sex determination as a case study in how evolution has produced very different mechanisms for achieving the same end. Here I take advantage of the fact that in many reptiles the sex of the offspring depends on the incubation temperature of the egg, a process known as temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD). One question concerns how the physical stimulus of temperature is transduced into a physiological stimulus that operates ultimately at a molecular level to determine an individual�s gonadal sex. In this work I use the red-eared slider turtle as the animal model system. I have demonstrated that sex steroid hormones are the physiological equivalent of incubation temperature, serving as the proximate trigger for male and female sex determination. Temperature appears to accomplish this end by acting on genes coding for steroidogenic enzymes (e.g., steroidogenic factor 1 and aromatase) and sex steroid hormone receptors (e.g., estrogen and androgen receptors), and other transcription factors and signaling molecules (e.g., Sox9, Wnt4, FOXL2, Mis, and Pumilio). Phylogenetic analysis indicates that TSD is the precursor of sex determination by genotypic mechanisms (e.g., sex chromosomes).
     
    Publications:
    Epigenetics and its implications for behavioral neuroendocrinology. (2008) Front Neuroendocrinol 29 (3), 344-357.
    Preoptic neuronal nitric oxide synthase induction by testosterone is consistent with a role in gating male copulatory behavior. (2008) Eur J Neurosci 27 (1), 183-190.
    Learning effects on sperm competition and reproductive fitness. (2007) Psychological Science 18, 758-762.
    Social neuroscience: Progress and promise. (2007) Perspectives in Psychological Science 2, 99-123.
    Adrenal-kidney-gonad complex measurements do not predict gonad-specific changes in gene expression patters during temperature-dependent sex determination in the red-eared slider turtle (Trachemys scripta). (2007) Journal of Experimental Zoology 307A, 163-470.
    Sex steroid hormone receptor expression during sexual development in the red-eared slider turtle (Trachemys scripta), a reptile with temperature-dependent sex determination. (2007) Sexual Development 1, 181-196.

     
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