7 Brain Regions in 20 Inbred Strains of Laboratory Mice

Survey of gene expression in 7 brain regions at 6-8wks of age in 20 inbred strains of laboratory mice. Autism is a highly heritable neurodevelopmental disorder with no consistent neuropathological hallmarks, diagnosed through behavioral inventory rather than a biomarker. The genetic etiology of autism is complex and likely has a significant interaction with the environment. To investigate the molecular and genetic nature of autism, we modeled the core symptom of social deficits in inbred strains of mice. Using gene expression profiles and behavioral phenotyping relevant to social deficits, we have identified basic cellular functions that may be dysregulated in the brain in autism. Correlations between these two complex datasets indicate cell morphology, proliferation, and migration may be perturbed in disorders of altered social behavior. Furthermore, these data in the mouse show significant overlap with published expression profiling in lymphoblastoid lines from autistic individuals. Keywords: Comparison between inbred strains and brain regions. Each sample consists of tissue pooled from three individual animals. Each pool was hybridized against the Stratagene RNA standard and is represented by a single array in the dataset. There are three biological replicates of each strain by region condition.