Effects of weaning age and housing conditions on phenotypic differences in mice.

ABSTRACT: Poor reproducibility is considered a serious problem in laboratory animal research, with important scientific, economic, and ethical implications. One possible source of conflicting findings in laboratory animal research are environmental differences between animal facilities combined with rigorous environmental standardization within studies. Due to phenotypic plasticity, study-specific differences in environmental conditions during development can induce differences in the animals' responsiveness to experimental treatments, thereby contributing to poor reproducibility of experimental results. Here, we studied how variation in weaning age (14-30 days) and housing conditions (single versus group housing) affects the phenotype of SWISS mice as measured by a range of behavioral and physiolog

SUBMITTER: Bailoo JD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7363894 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature