Assessing Anxiety Through Defecation Kinetics in BXD Mice

Lucia Zhang

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-9-2024

Keywords

JMG

JAX Location

In: Student Reports, Summer 2024, The Jackson Laboratory

Abstract

While understanding anxiety in mice is crucial to behavioral research, methods of measuring anxiety have been notoriously difficult to understand. Defecation patterns of mice in open-field assays, measured by the number of fecal boli counts present at the end of the assay, have historically been used as one such anxiety measure. However, machine-learning-based analysis of open-field tests has opened the doors for higher-resolution quantification of defecation patterns. In this project, I analyzed anxiety measures across different tests and laboratories using correlation analysis, determining that many traditional anxiety measures are inconsistent. However, defecation remained consistent and proved to be highly genetically regulated. Using quantitative trait loci (QTL) and enrichment analysis, I determined that defecation kinetics are enriched for anxiety-related genes, phenotypes, and pathways, concluding that these novel kinetics measures are informative for future anxiety assays.

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