Chronic alcohol consumption from adolescence-to-adulthood in mice — Effect on gene expression in the hypothalamus

We employed a paradigm of chronic moderate alcohol intake from adolescence-to-adulthood in mice, and analyzed the alcohol effect on both behavioral and hypothalamic gene expression changes. We employed a paradigm of chronic moderate alcohol intake from adolescence-to-adulthood in mice. Before chronic alcohol drinking began, mice (3 weeks old) were allowed to adapt to drinking tubes with both tubes containing water from experimental day 1-5. After adaptation period, mice were randomly aside to 5% alcohol group, 10% alcohol group or water-only control group (n=16-18). Chronic alcohol drinking lasted to day 57 of the experiment without any change and interruption. Then each mouse is sacrificed by decapitation, and the hypothalamus was dissected for rapid freeze and storage at -80 ºC. Hypothalamus tissue samples were used for total RNA extraction. RNA samples were pooled for microarray. For water-only group, nine mice were used to make three pools, with three equal amounts of RNA samples per pool. For alcohol group, nineteen mice were used to make nine pools, with one to three equal RNA samples per pool.