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

Selectively manipulating genes cigarette lead to a greater appreciation of molecular and cellular brain functions and bearings. However these specific gene mutations whitethorn trigger compensatory changes that mask a phenotype or adds to it. Therefore it might be difficult to determine the specific effect of a mutation on behaviour. This is especially true since a mutation may be modify by the environment or a specific genetic priming.Because of this it is main(prenominal) to find the best way to understand and interpret behavioral data. The Morris smooth task is a task where the wolfs are encouraged to find a platform in a piss tank. Through careful exam it was found that there where several behavioral trends. One of them is called thigmotaxis and it refers to the mice swimming earnest the wall without even trying to find the platform. This has to be overcome in order to achieve the goal. If it is not overcome then the stage where the creature learns the locatio n of the platform cannot be reached. A generalized interpretation of the chromosomal mutation animals behavior might lead us to hope that it cannot achieve its task because of learning and memory impairment however it can be observed that the reason for its failure might be its softness 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 variation of the animals behavior is the inability to overcome thigmotaxis and is not related to its inability to accomplish learning tasks.To understand the specific cause of the mutation on animals champion must 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 produce decent variation to account for the range of almost all behavioral measures. It is bad to determine the effects of the mutation alone without it being confused with effects from other sources. It is helpful to test inbred animals where heterozygous animals are couple to produce wild-type and homozygous offspring.