Hello Everyone: I am working with drugs and for my results discussing the age of mice is relevant, the mice in one group are 9 weeks old and the ones in the other group are 11 weeks old. In the Harlan Book, BalB mice present a stable line of weight at nine weeks of age, and the Vet said this is enough for considered the mice as adults. However I need a reference to make the statement that mice of 9 weeks of age are considered adults or young adults. I really appreciate it if someone could let me known about a paper or author that corroborated that.
Hi,
Following is a link of a paper where the authors cosidered 9 weeks old balb/c mice as sexually mature & adult. They have mentioned this in the discussion section under a subheading 'strain differences'.
http://www.pnas.org/content/94/19/10409.full
best wishes.
Hi Dolores,
Sorry, I don't have a specific reference, but it is generally considered that mice aged 1 month or more are young adults--or at least many people argue this. I don't think you would get much push back that 9 week old mice are young adult stage. Mice reach sexual maturity around 5-6 weeks old, so it seems sensible that this is decent milestone for calling them young adult or late adolescent animals.
8 weeks or old mice are considered to be adults. I know this through my project of mouse age dependent study, but I do not have a ref on my hand right now.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283841162_Men_and_mice_Relating_their_ages
Article Men and mice: Relating their ages