Clapcote Steven J, Lazar Noah L, Bechard Allison R, Roder John C
Mount Sinai Hospital Research Institute, Room 860, 600 University Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, M5G 1X5, Canada.
Behav Genet. 2005 Sep;35(5):591-601. doi: 10.1007/s10519-005-5634-5.
Many of the inbred mouse strains commonly used in biomedical research are homozygous for the rd1 mutation of the Pde6b gene, which causes retinal degeneration. To dissociate the behavioural effects of rd1 homozygosity from those of the genetic background of the host strain in the most widely used paradigms for evaluating the cognitive abilities of mice, two rd1 homozygous strains (C3H/HeJ and CBA/J) were compared with two Pde6b wild-type strains, each possessing a genetic background identical (C3A.BLiA-Pde6b+/J) or very similar (CBA/CaJ) to that of its rd1 homozygous relative. In the fear conditioning procedure, the presence of the rd1 mutation had no effect on performance at any stage, as the superior contextual learning of the CBA/J and CBA/CaJ strains could be explained by genetic background effects alone. In the Morris water maze, only the Pde6b wild-type C3A.BLiA-Pde6b+/J and CBA/CaJ strains were able to demonstrate spatial learning. The study thus demonstrates how retinal degeneration and genetic background have different effects in these two tests of hippocampus-dependent learning and memory.
许多常用于生物医学研究的近交系小鼠品系对于导致视网膜变性的Pde6b基因的rd1突变是纯合的。为了在评估小鼠认知能力的最常用范式中，将rd1纯合性的行为影响与宿主品系遗传背景的行为影响区分开来，将两个rd1纯合品系（C3H/HeJ和CBA/J）与两个Pde6b野生型品系进行比较，每个野生型品系的遗传背景与其rd1纯合相对品系相同（C3A.BLiA-Pde6b+/J）或非常相似（CBA/CaJ）。在恐惧条件反射程序中，rd1突变的存在在任何阶段对表现都没有影响，因为CBA/J和CBA/CaJ品系优越的情境学习仅可以用遗传背景效应来解释。在莫里斯水迷宫实验中，只有Pde6b野生型的C3A.BLiA-Pde6b+/J和CBA/CaJ品系能够表现出空间学习能力。因此，该研究证明了视网膜变性和遗传背景在这两项依赖海马体的学习和记忆测试中具有不同的影响。
