Transgenic and knockout databases: Behavioral profiles of mouse mutants

Genetically engineered strains of mice, modified by transgenesis or gene ta rgeting ("knockouts") are being generated at an impressive rate and used, a mong other areas, as premiere research tools in deciphering the genetic bas is of behavior. As behavioral phenotyping strategies continue to evolve, ch aracterization of these "designer" mice will provide models to evaluate the efficacy of new pharmacological and gene therapy treatments in human hered itary diseases. Reported behavioral profiles include aberrant social, repro ductive, and parental behaviors, learning and memory deficits, feeding diso rders, aggression, anxiety-related behaviors, pain/analgesia, and altered r esponses to antidepressants, antipsychotics, ethanol, and psychostimulant d rugs of abuse. The Induced Mutant Resource (IMR) at The Jackson Laboratory (TJL, Bar Harbor, ME, USA) imports, cryopreserves, develops, maintains, and distributes biomedically important stocks of transgenic and targeted mutan t mice to the research community. Information on neurological/behavioral st rains - including behavioral performance, husbandry requirements, strain av ailability, and genetic typing protocols - is provided through the IMR. dat abase (http:// www.jax.org/resources/documents/imr/). A catalog of availabl e strains is readily accessible via the JAX (R) Mice website at http:// jax mice.jax.org/index.shtml. In addition, TJL is now host to TBASE (http://tba sejax.org/), a comprehensive, public-domain database with primary emphasis on mouse knockouts. TBASE contains an exhaustive list of knockout-related c itations and provides an extensive phenotypic characterization of numerous behavioral mutants that is extracted directly from the literature. Present efforts to merge the two resources into a novel, schematically enhanced dat abase, provisionally named Transgenic and Targeted Mutation Database (TTMD) , will be briefly discussed. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights rese rved.