CHROMOSOMAL MAPPING OF THE PSYCHOMOTOR STIMULANT EFFECTS OF COCAINE IN BXD RECOMBINANT INBRED MICE

To elucidate genes associated with cocaine's locomotor stimulant effec ts, we used recombinant inbred-quantitative trait loci (RI-QTL) analys es to identify chromosomal loci associated with locomotor activity bef ore (baseline) and after cocaine treatment. RI-QTL analyses seek to id entify associations between a quantitative measure of a phenotype and one or more previously mapped marker loci across a panel of RI strains . In the present study, 11 BXD RI strains were used to identify severa l putative QTLs for each phenotype. Both baseline locomotor activity a nd cocaine's locomotor stimulant effects are polygenic, with both uniq ue and overlapping genetic influences. The largest associations for ba seline activity were observed on chromosomes 5 and 9 and the largest a ssociations for cocaine's psychomotor stimulant effects on chromosomes 3 and 17.