title: High-Throughput Automated Phenotyping of Two Genetic Mouse Models of Huntington's Disease.
abstract: Phenotyping with traditional behavioral assays constitutes a major bottleneck in the primary screening, characterization, and validation of genetic mouse models of disease, leading to downstream delays in drug discovery efforts. We present a novel and comprehensive one-stop approach to phenotyping, the PhenoCube™. This system simultaneously captures the cognitive performance, motor activity, and circadian patterns of group-housed mice by use of home-cage operant conditioning modules (IntelliCage) and custom-built computer vision software. We evaluated two different mouse models of Huntington's Disease (HD), the R6/2 and the BACHD in the PhenoCube™ system. Our results demonstrated that this system can efficiently capture and track alterations in both cognitive performance and locomotor activity patterns associated with these disease models. This work extends our prior demonstration that PhenoCube™ can characterize circadian dysfunction in BACHD mice and shows that this system, with the experimental protocols used, is a sensitive and efficient tool for a first pass high-throughput screening of mouse disease models in general and mouse models of neurodegeneration in particular.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey.
authors.forename: Fuat
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Balci
authors.forename: Stephen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Oakeshott
authors.forename: Jul Lea
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Shamy
authors.forename: Bassem F
authors.initials: BF
authors.lastname: El-Khodor
authors.forename: Igor
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Filippov
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Mushlin
authors.forename: Russell
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Port
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Connor
authors.forename: Ahmad
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Paintdakhi
authors.forename: Liliana
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Menalled
authors.forename: Sylvie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ramboz
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Howland
authors.forename: Seung
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kwak
authors.forename: Dani
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Brunner