Organisms Commons^™

Discovery Of Distinct Mechanisms Underlying The Relationship Between Drug Taking And Predisposing Behaviors, Tyler A. Roy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Drug addiction is a heritable disease characterized by compulsive drug use. The biological mechanisms driving addiction remain largely unknown.¹ Previous studies show shared genetic mechanisms underlying addiction risk phenotypes such as anxiety, depression, and novelty/sensation seeking.^2,3 Therefore, high-throughput behavioral screening of these traits in single gene knockout mice can allow for the rapid detection of addiction risk candidate genes and mechanisms. Many of these traits are represented in the Knock-Out Mouse Program (KOMP) phenotyping pipeline. Of the initial two hundred twenty-one strains screened in this program, we tested nineteen phenodeviant knock-out mouse strains with C57BL/6NJ controls (N = …