Host Genetics Maps to Behaviour and Brain Structure in Developmental Mice

Overview

Journal Behav Brain Funct

Publisher Biomed Central

Specialties Neurology
Psychology
Social Sciences

Date 2025 Jan 3

PMID 39748372

Authors

Sarah Asbury

Jonathan K Y Lai

Kelly C Rilett

Zeeshan Haqqee

Benjamin C Darwin

Jacob Ellegood

Jason P Lerch

Jane A Foster

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Gene-environment interactions in the postnatal period have a long-term impact on neurodevelopment. To effectively assess neurodevelopment in the mouse, we developed a behavioural pipeline that incorporates several validated behavioural tests to measure translationally relevant milestones of behaviour in mice. The behavioral phenotype of 1060 wild type and genetically-modified mice was examined followed by structural brain imaging at 4 weeks of age. The influence of genetics, sex, and early life stress on behaviour and neuroanatomy was determined using traditional statistical and machine learning methods. Analytical results demonstrated that neuroanatomical diversity was primarily associated with genotype whereas behavioural phenotypic diversity was observed to be more susceptible to gene-environment variation. We describe a standardized mouse phenotyping pipeline, termed the Developmental Behavioural Milestones (DBM) Pipeline released alongside the 1000 Mouse Developmental Behavioural Milestones (1000 Mouse DBM) database to institute a novel framework for reproducible interventional neuroscience research.

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