Causes of the Behavior of Transgenic Mice :: essays research papers

Selectively manipulating genes can lead to a greater understanding of molecular(a) and cellular brain functions and deportments. However these specific gene variances may incite compensatory changes that mask a phenotype or adds to it. Therefore it might be challenging to touch on the specific effect of a mutation on behavior. This is particularly true since a mutation may be affected by the purlieu or a specific genetic background.Because of this it is important to maintain the best way to understand and interpret behavioral data. The Morris Swimming childbed is a occupation where the animals are encouraged to find a program in a water tank. Through careful examination it was rig that there where several behavioral trends. One of them is called thigmotaxis and it refers to the mice swimming near the hem in without even trying to find the platform. This has to be quash in coif to succeed the goal. If it is not overcome then the stage where the animal learns t he placement of the platform cannot be reached. A generalized interpretation of the mutant animals behavior might lead us to believe that it cannot achieve its task because of learnedness and memory impairment however it can be observed that the reason for its failure might be its inability to overcome its initial behavior. To verify that this is the cause of the animals behavior there is a technique called PCA. This technique allows researchers to correlate specific measures of the animals movements with various factors such as thigmotaxis to understand the specific causes of the behavior and how the mutation affects the animals. It has been found that 50% of the source of sportsman of the animals behavior is the inability to overcome thigmotaxis and is not related to its inability to perform learning tasks.To understand the specific effects of the mutation on animals one moldiness also be careful to eliminate genetic background and environment as affecting performance. A M eta analysis of the data for the water task has shown that both environmental and genetic effect shit sufficient variation to account for the range of almost all behavioral measures. It is hard to determine the effects of the mutation alone without it being confused with effects from different sources. It is helpful to test inbred animals where heterozygous animals are mated to produce wild-type and homozygous offspring.