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The Development of Science-based Guidelines for Laboratory Animal Care Proceedings of the November 2003 International Workshop (2004) / Chapter Skim
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Plenary Lecture
Pages 7-14

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From page 7...
... Plenary Lecture
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From page 9...
... findings in the modern history of studies with inbred mouse strains is the repeated finding that inbred mice of the C57BL lineage prefer to drink alcohol solutions over plain tap water, and those of the DBA lineage are near-teetotalers, while many other inbred strains show intermediate levels of preference for alcohol (Belknap and others 1993; McClearn and Rodgers 1959; Rodgers 1972; Wahlsten and others 2003a)
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From page 10...
... A MULTISITE TRIAL Several years ago, my colleagues Doug Wahlsten at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Bruce Dudek at the State University of New York at Albany, and I set out to evaluate the stability of strain differences in some simple laboratory behaviors. Our principal interest was whether the reliability of the genetic differences on a behavior we saw routinely within each of our laboratories was predictive of reliability of genetic differences
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From page 11...
... We built or purchased identical apparatus, adopted exactly the same test protocols, and when the time came, tested 379 mice for activity, elevated plus maze behavior, accelerating rotarod performance, water escape learning, and activity again after a cocaine injection. After the weekend off, mice were given a test of alcohol preference drinking.
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From page 12...
... During the early course of his several-year career ranging from postdoctoral fellow to associate professor, Jeff Mogil and his assistants had collected baseline data on a simple, spinally mediated reflex response to acute pain in mice, the tail withdrawal reflex (Chesler and others 2002a,b)
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From page 13...
... Although any careful experimenter standardizes conditions within his or her own laboratory to achieve reliable genetic results, it cannot be assumed that within-laboratory reliability translates directly into across-laboratory reliability. Some features of the laboratory environment are nearly impossible to duplicate.
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From page 14...
... Second, a good deal of time could be wasted exploring apparent gene effects that actually only occur in the standard conditions. Finally, failure to explore a range of environmental conditions may underestimate the actual genetic influence, which is very likely to be expressed as GXE interaction.
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Key Terms

  • laboratory environment
  • multisite trial
  • plus maze
  • alcohol preference
  • strain differences

  • individual differences
  • elevated plus
  • tap water
  • own laboratory
  • laboratory mice

  • environment include
  • environmental variability
  • genetic influence
  • gxe interaction
  • specific experimenters

  • doug wahlsten
  • inbred mouse
  • mouse phenome
  • phenome project
  • mouse strains

  • standard conditions
  • lineage prefer
  • resembling pedigrees
  • exact environmental
  • environmental influence

  • laboratory adopts
  • behavioral tasks
  • laboratory lore
  • gene effects
  • home cage


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