Distinct dynamics of social motivation drive differential social behavior in laboratory rat and mouse strains.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Netser S
PROVIDER: S-EPMC7679456 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:The survival of individuals of gregarious species depends on their social interactions. In humans, atypical social behavior is a hallmark of several psychopathological conditions, many of which have sex-specific manifestations. Various laboratory mouse strains are used to reveal the mechanisms mediating typical and atypical social behavior in mammals. Here, we used three social discrimination tests to characterize social behavior in males and females of three widely used laboratory mouse strains (C57BL/6J, BALB/c, and ICR). We found marked sex- and strain-specific differences in the behavior exhibited by subjects, in a test-dependent manner. Interestingly, some characteristics were strain-dependent, while others were sex-dependent. We then crossbred C57BL/6J and BALB/c mice and found that offspring of such crossbreeding exhibit social behavior which differs from both parental strains and depends on the specific combination of parental strains. Thus, social behavior of laboratory mice is sex- and strain-specific and depends on both genetic and environmental factors.
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Project description:BackgroundThe laboratory rat (Rattus norvegicus) is an important model for studying many aspects of human health and disease. Detailed knowledge on genetic variation between strains is important from a biomedical, particularly pharmacogenetic point of view and useful for marker selection for genetic cloning and association studies.ResultsWe show that Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) in commonly used rat strains are surprisingly well represented in wild rat isolates. Shotgun sequencing of 814 Kbp in one wild rat resulted in the identification of 485 SNPs as compared with the Brown Norway genome sequence. Genotyping 36 commonly used inbred rat strains showed that 84% of these alleles are also polymorphic in a representative set of laboratory rat strains.ConclusionWe postulate that shotgun sequencing in a wild rat sample and subsequent genotyping in multiple laboratory or domesticated strains rather than direct shotgun sequencing of multiple strains, could be the most efficient SNP discovery approach. For the rat, laboratory strains still harbor a large portion of the haplotypes present in wild isolates, suggesting a relatively recent common origin and supporting the idea that rat inbred strains, in contrast to mouse inbred strains, originate from a single species, R. norvegicus.
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