Impact of intra- and interstrain cross-fostering on mouse maternal care.
Genes Brain Behav. 2008-03-01; 7(2): 184-192
DOI: 10.1111/j.1601-183x.2007.00337.x
Read on PubMed
1. Genes Brain Behav. 2008 Mar;7(2):184-92. Epub 2007 Jun 29.
Impact of intra- and interstrain cross-fostering on mouse maternal care.
van der Veen R(1), Abrous DN, de Kloet ER, Piazza PV, Koehl M.
Author information:
(1)INSERM, U862, University Of Bordeaux 2, Bordeaux, France.
The importance of maternal care in shaping an individual’s phenotype in health
and disease is becoming more and more apparent in both human and animal studies.
However, in mouse studies using inbred strains or knockout mice to analyze the
genetic influences on the development of normal and aberrant behavioral
phenotypes, maternal behavior is very poorly characterized and often ignored.
This study provides an extensive analysis of spontaneous maternal behavior of
inbred mice in three conditions: (1) comparing two commonly used strains, (2)
analyzing the impact of adopting pups from the same strain (intrastrain
cross-fostering) and (3) analyzing the impact of adopting pups from a different
strain (interstrain cross-fostering). For each condition, maternal behavior was
analyzed continuously over 23-h periods on postnatal days 2, 4, 6 and 9. We
report that (1) the maternal behavior of C57BL/6J and DBA/2J dams toward their
biological offspring is highly similar, (2) intrastrain cross-fostering has
minimal impact on maternal behavior of C57BL/6J and DBA/2J dams, (3) interstrain
cross-fostering does not modify the strain differences in maternal care observed
between AKR and C3H/He mothers and (4) the pup strain does influence the amount
of maternal behavior shown by both mothers in interstrain cross-fostering. These
latter findings demonstrate that both mother strain and pup strain are key
determinants of maternal behavior.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1601-183X.2007.00337.x
PMID: 17608702 [Indexed for MEDLINE]