What's wrong with my mouse cage? Methodological considerations for modeling lifestyle factors and gene-environment interactions in mice

Christina Mo; Thibault Renoir; Anthony J Hannan

Journal article

What's wrong with my mouse cage? Methodological considerations for modeling lifestyle factors and gene-environment interactions in mice

Christina Mo, Thibault Renoir, Anthony J Hannan

JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE METHODS | ELSEVIER | Published : 2016

DOI: 10.1016/j.jneumeth.2015.08.008

Abstract

The mechanistic understanding of lifestyle contributions to disease has been largely driven by work in laboratory rodent models using environmental interventions. These interventions show an array of methodologies and sometimes unclear collective conclusions, hampering clinical interpretations. Here we discuss environmental enrichment, exercise and stress interventions to illustrate how different protocols can affect the interpretations of environmental factors in disease. We use Huntington's disease (HD) as an example because its mouse models exhibit excellent validity and HD was the first genetic animal model in which environmental stimulation was found to be beneficial. We make a number o..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Thibault Renoir Author Florey Department of Neuroscience and Mental Health

Anthony Hannan Author Florey Department of Neuroscience and Mental Health

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Grants

Awarded by National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) via a Senior Research Fellowship

Awarded by ARC Discovery Early Career Research Award

Funding Acknowledgements

We thank past and present members of the Hannan Laboratory for useful discussions. AJH is supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) via a Senior Research Fellowship and Project Grants (1047674, 1083468, 1085977), as well as grants from the Walter Cottman Endowment Fund (Equity Trustees) and the Macquarie Foundation. TR is supported by an ARC Discovery Early Career Research Award (140100588).