Dataset Information

Longitudinal home-cage automated assessment of climbing behavior shows sexual dimorphism and aging-related decrease in C57BL/6J healthy mice and allows early detection of motor impairment in the N171-82Q mouse model of Huntington's disease.

ABSTRACT: Monitoring the activity of mice within their home cage is proving to be a powerful tool for revealing subtle and early-onset phenotypes in mouse models. Video-tracking, in particular, lends itself to automated machine-learning technologies that have the potential to improve the manual annotations carried out by humans. This type of recording and analysis is particularly powerful in objective phenotyping, monitoring behaviors with no experimenter intervention. Automated home-cage testing allows the recording of non-evoked voluntary behaviors, which do not require any contact with the animal or exposure to specialist equipment. By avoiding stress deriving from handling, this approach, on the one hand, increases the welfare of experimental animals and, on the other hand, increases the reliability of results excluding confounding effects of stress on behavior. In this study, we show that the monitoring of climbing on the wire cage lid of a standard individually ventilated cage (IVC) yields reproducible data reflecting complex phenotypes of individual mouse inbred strains and of a widely used model of neurodegeneration, the N171-82Q mouse model of Huntington's disease (HD). Measurements in the home-cage environment allowed for the collection of comprehensive motor activity data, which revealed sexual dimorphism, daily biphasic changes, and aging-related decrease in healthy C57BL/6J mice. Furthermore, home-cage recording of climbing allowed early detection of motor impairment in the N171-82Q HD mouse model. Integrating cage-floor activity with cage-lid activity (climbing) has the potential to greatly enhance the characterization of mouse strains, detecting early and subtle signs of disease and increasing reproducibility in preclinical studies.

SUBMITTER: Bains RS

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10073658 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Longitudinal home-cage automated assessment of climbing behavior shows sexual dimorphism and aging-related decrease in C57BL/6J healthy mice and allows early detection of motor impairment in the N171-82Q mouse model of Huntington's disease.

Bains Rasneer S RS Forrest Hamish H Sillito Rowland R RR Armstrong J Douglas JD Stewart Michelle M Nolan Patrick M PM Wells Sara E SE

Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience 20230322

Monitoring the activity of mice within their home cage is proving to be a powerful tool for revealing subtle and early-onset phenotypes in mouse models. Video-tracking, in particular, lends itself to automated machine-learning technologies that have the potential to improve the manual annotations carried out by humans. This type of recording and analysis is particularly powerful in objective phenotyping, monitoring behaviors with no experimenter intervention. Automated home-cage testing allows t ...[more]

PMID: 37035623

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Project description:Our aim was to find an effective treatment for the dysfunction in energy regulation and hypothalamic integrity occurring in many HuntingtonM-bM-^@M-^Ys disease (HD) patients and mouse models. HD is a neurodegenerative disease caused by an expanded CAG repeat and is characterized by mutant huntingtin aggregates, cell death, progressive motor impairment, and cognitive alterations. Changes in neuroendocrine function, body weight, energy metabolism, euglycemia, appetite function, sleep, and gut function can also occur. It is likely that the locus of these alterations is the hypothalamus. Male B6C3-Tg(HD82Gln)81Dbo/J (N171-82Q) mice and age-matched wild-type (WT) mice were used. Transgenic mice were identified by PCR analysis of tail DNA. N171-82Q mice express 82 polyglutamine repeats and display multiple HuntingtonM-bM-^@M-^Ys disease-like symptoms. Either Ex-4 (n=10, 300 M-BM-5L of 0.1 M-BM-5mol/L solution, Bachem, Torrance, CA), the GLP-1-transferrin hybrid molecule (n=10, GLP-1Tf, 1mg/kg), insulin (n=10, 5Units, Lantus) or a saline vehicle treatment (n=10, phosphate buffered saline, PBS; Sigma, St. Louis, MO) was administered by a once-daily subcutaneous injection. Injections were started when animals were pre-symptomatic (2 months of age) and continued for 5 weeks. 3 Mice from each treatment qroup were used for the microarray analysis. RNA was extracted from frozen hypothalamus tissue using 1.0mm glass beads (BioSpec Products, Inc.) in a Precellys 24 Tissue Homogenizer (Bertin Technologies) and Qiagen RNeasy Mini Kits according to manufacturer's specifications. Quality and quantity of the total RNA was checked with the Agilent 2100 bioanalyzer using RNA 6000 Nano chips. The standard Illumina protocol using Illumina TotalPrep RNA Amplification Kit (Ambion; Austin, TX, cat # IL1791) was used to biotin label the aRNA generated and then hybridized to Illumina's Sentrix MouseRef-8 v2 Expression BeadChips (Illumina, San Diego, CA). Arrays were scanned at a resolution of 0.8um using the Beadstation 500 X from Illumina.

Dataset Information

Longitudinal home-cage automated assessment of climbing behavior shows sexual dimorphism and aging-related decrease in C57BL/6J healthy mice and allows early detection of motor impairment in the N171-82Q mouse model of Huntington's disease.

Publications

Longitudinal home-cage automated assessment of climbing behavior shows sexual dimorphism and aging-related decrease in C57BL/6J healthy mice and allows early detection of motor impairment in the N171-82Q mouse model of Huntington's disease.

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