title: What makes a good mother? Implication of inter-, and intrastrain strain "cross fostering" for emotional changes in mouse offspring.
abstract: Currently, the mouse represents the preferred model organism among mammals used for animal studies. Due to a great availability of mutant strains it represents a standard method to analyze in vivo the effects of targeted gene manipulations. While this - at least in theory - represents a valuable tool to elucidate the pathophysiology of certain human diseases, there are several caveats which need to be considered working with animals. In our study we aimed at elucidating, how a widely established breeding strategy, i.e. the use of "foster mothers" to save the survival of compromised mouse pups for ongoing experiments, per se, affects the emotional phenotype of the fostered offspring. Since it is a popular method to use outbred strains like NMRI to do this job, we sought to evaluate the potential effects of such an artificial postnatal condition and compare either offspring nurtured by their biological mothers or two different strains of foster mothers. Hence we analysed changes in maternal care and later on the emotional behaviour of male and female C57BL/6 mice reared by (i) their biological C57BL/6 mothers, (ii) C57BL/6 foster mothers and (iii) NMRI foster mothers in a behavioural test battery. In addition we assessed corticosterone levels as indicator for stress-physiological changes. Besides clear differences in maternal behaviour, our study indicates an altered emotional state (i.e. differences in anxiety and depressive-like features) in mice reared by different "categories" of mothers, which emphasizes the importance to embed such perinatal conditions in the evaluation of animal-deriving data.
authors.affiliation: Interfaculty Biomedical Research Facility (IBF), University of Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld: 347, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany.
authors.forename: Sandra
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Lerch
authors.affiliation: Central Institute of Mental Health (ZI) Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany.
authors.forename: Christiane
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Brandwein
authors.affiliation: Central Institute of Mental Health (ZI) Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany.
authors.forename: Christof
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Dormann
authors.affiliation: Central Institute of Mental Health (ZI) Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Gass
authors.affiliation: Interfaculty Biomedical Research Facility (IBF), University of Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld: 347, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany. Electronic address: chourbaji@uni-heidelberg.de.
authors.forename: Sabine
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chourbaji
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D000831:Animals, Newborn; D001835:Body Weight; D003345:Corticosterone / Q000097:blood; D003623:Dark Adaptation; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D004924:Escape Reaction / Q000502:physiology; D005106:Exploratory Behavior / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D005581:Foster Home Care / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D008425:Maternal Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D018782:Maze Learning; D051379:Mice; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D009034:Mother-Child Relations / Q000523:psychology*; D012737:Sex Factors; D012919:Social Behavior; D013550:Swimming / Q000523:psychology
chemical_list: D003345:Corticosterone
keywords: Depression; Emotional behaviour; Fostering; Maternal environment