Phenotyping of new mouse mutants

Basic phenotyping

• Careful and comprehensive phenotype and welfare assessment

Transgenic animals are valuable tools in biomedical research and represent a refinement in comparison to traditional experimental models. Nevertheless, altering the genome of an animal may induce health consequences. Symptoms of suffering are often independent from the experimental use and also present and transmitted to the next generation in a breeding colony. Therefore, each newly generated transgenic strain has to be routinely assessed for the health and welfare status. If a mouse strain suffers from reduced viability or impaired health due to the genetic modification, every effort has to be made to minimize animal suffering. Data from basic phenotyping are an important part of the scientific characterization of a new mutant.

Advanced phenotyping

• Implantation of a body transmitter to measure different physiological and behavioural parameter (heart rate, body temperature and motor activity) by telemetry systems

Telemetry in undisturbed and unrestrained animals is the only technique to obtain accurate and reliable heart rate data in adult mice. Furthermore, other physiological and behavioural parameter like the body temperature and motor activity can be measured with the same system. Telemetry can be used to characterize the phenotype of the mutants and to analyse the effect of particular treatments in an experiment. The technique of implantation of the transmitter is very challenging and the equipment (receiver, hard and soft ware) is very expensive. Therefore, we plan to establish the telemetry system in our network core facility to make it available to interested scientists.

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