Technological development for gene engineering of prairie vole, aiming establishment of a higher evaluating system of social behaviors

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25660074
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Applied biochemistry
• Research Institution: Tohoku University
• Principal Investigator: NISHIMORI Katsuhiko 東北大学, (連合)農学研究科(研究院), 教授 (10164609)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 組み替え動物 / 発生工学 / 生殖工学 / 平原ハタネズミ / オキシトシン / オキシトシン受容体 / I.V.F. / 自閉症スペクトラム障害

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Oxytocin (OXT) and oxytocin receptor (OXTR) were pathophysiologically related to ASD (Autistic Spectrum Disorders), and plural groups reported significant curing effects by administration of OXT to the patients. Biologically, physiologically and pharmacologically adequate model animal than mice or rats is now desired. Prairie vole is a suitable candidate animal for these studies, but no appropriate techniques have been developed to generate gene knockout or gene knockin prairie vole. In this study, we established techniques to facilitate generation of real gene knockout and gene knockin prairie vole, such as development of optimum conditions to stably prepare fertilized eggs from this specie, the establishment of technique for IVF with vole’s eggs, and the establishment of conditions to culture one-cell embryos to grow blastocysts in vitro. These would be a great help to generate prairie real genes KO prairie voles. and expand the usefulness of this specie in neuroscience.

Free Research Field

行動神経科学、大脳生理学