Imagine a chicken that could speak or a pigeon with a voice rivaling that of the most musical songbirds.<\/p>\n
Granted, the world probably doesn\u2019t need any gossiping chickens or pigeons breaking out in song. But why some birds learn to create a deep repertoire and others are unable to has long been a research focus of the neurobiologist Erich D. Jarvis.<\/p>\n
\u201cVocal learning, just like spoken language itself, is a rare trait,\u201d said Dr. Jarvis, who directs the Neurogenetics of Language laboratory at Rockefeller University in New York.<\/p>\n
He studies the small group of species capable of speech, focusing on birds and mice, and he has long hoped to genetically engineer an animal that can vocalize in new ways. Introducing manipulated genes into the brain of a bird or a mouse that doesn\u2019t vocalize could create that ability and provide new clues into the origins of speech. It may also one day help in finding treatments for people with speech problems or brain disorders.<\/p>\n
Dr. Jarvis, 60, didn\u2019t start his career in neuroengineering. He once hoped to become a professional dancer, performing ballet at Manhattan\u2019s renowned High School for the Performing Arts and then studying at the Alvin Ailey dance school. He was a member of the Westchester Ballet Company when he began wondering how the brain was able to create dance movements.<\/p>\n
His mentor at Rockefeller was Fernando Nottebohm, the researcher who discovered in the early 1980s that songbird brains generate new neurons each spring to enable them to sing. That revolutionary understanding of neurogenesis led to further findings that all brains, including human ones, grow new neurons throughout life. Until then, it had been scientific gospel that people came into the world with a fixed number.<\/p>\n
From 2002 to 2005, Dr. Jarvis helped lead the Avian Brain Nomenclature Consortium, a project that renamed the regions of the avian brain to show that it was remarkably sophisticated. The research undermined the use of the term \u201cbird brain\u201d as a pejorative.<\/p>\n
That same year, he won the Alan T. Waterman Award, and then he won the National Institutes of Health Director\u2019s Pioneer Award three years later.<\/p>\n
Dr. Jarvis\u2019s efforts to understand birdsong have led him to other projects, including ones working with high-quality genome assemblies \u2014 maps that allow researchers to identify which genes are related to different traits. Because of that, he was appointed as chairman of the Vertebrate Genomes Project, a global effort to sequence the genomes of 70,000 vertebrate species.<\/p>\n
The project involved building the Genome Ark, a reference database for research and conservation, especially for endangered species. The first sequencing phase of that project, involving 260 species, is nearly complete. Dr. Jarvis is also working to sequence the genomes of all bird species, which number about 10,500.<\/p>\n