Poster 25
Presenter: Clarissa Parker
Wednesday, 3:00 – 5:00pm

Genome-wide association study of behavior in outbred mice

Clarissa C. Parker¹, Shyam Gopalakrishnan¹, Natalia Gonzales¹, Jenny Park¹, Joe Davis¹, Abraham A. Palmer^1,2
1Department of Human Genetics, the University of Chicago, IL 60637 ²Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, the University of Chicago, IL 60637

Understanding the genetic basis of behavior remains a major challenge. We have taken advantage of an extant outbred population that has been maintained using an outbred breeding scheme for more than 100 generations. We have carefully phenotyped more than 1,000 male CFW mice for a battery of behavioral and physiological traits including methamphetamine sensitivity, fear conditioning, prepulse inhibition, fasting glucose, and body weight. We have genotyped these mice at ~100,000 SNPs using a genotyping-by sequencing approach. We are using these data to perform a genome wide association study for each trait. In addition, we have performed RNASeq on three brain regions (prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, and striatum), which allows us to search for behavioral and expression QTLs that co-map to the same intervals.