I want to test behavior (Elevated Plus Maze, Tail Suspension Test and Morris water Maze) in mice after social isolation. Which strain do you recommend for my situaition? Are there any significant differences in behavior of these two strains (C57BL6 and BALB/c) which could invalidate my experiment?
Thank you.
Balb/c mice are a naturally anxious strain of mice and show markedly different behaviour to C57s, particularly when young (3-5 weeks). If you are looking to examine the effects of social isolation on behaviour you are likely to get a stronger "baseline" reading from non-isolated C57s than you are from Balb/c mice.
Balb/c mice are a naturally anxious strain of mice and show markedly different behaviour to C57s, particularly when young (3-5 weeks). If you are looking to examine the effects of social isolation on behaviour you are likely to get a stronger "baseline" reading from non-isolated C57s than you are from Balb/c mice.
As I know, most of the labs use B6 to do behavioral tests in Taiwan. I also used B6 to do locomotion and stereotype tests when exploring the mechanism of drug addiction, and my colleagues all used B6 or the cross-strain of B6 to do those tasks, like MWM and Tail-suspension. Also according to my own expereinces, I think B6 is a more fierce strain than Balb/c, but I'm not sure whether this character would inflence the tests you are going to do. Good Luck!
Hi Rafael,
I agree with Philip and Li-Ming, C57BL6 have been a very reliable behavioral background strain for behavior. Some mouse strains are either very poor or too good at learning a skill but the C57BL6 mice are in the middle, which means that whatever variable you introduce has the opportunity of either increasing or decreasing their ability to perform in a task.
Best of luck in your studies!
There is a good book about animal personalities which has an interesting chapter about laboratory rodents (rats and mice). This is useful to read for this kind of work.
Chapter 15. Behavioral, Physiological, and Health Biases in Laboratory Rodents: A Basis for Understanding Mechanistic Links between Human Personality and Health
Sonia A. Cavigelli, Kerry C. Michael, Christina M. Ragan
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo14059603.html
Keep in mind that C57/BL6 are quite stress-resistant, so you might struggle to detect the effect of your stressor on their behaviour
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