Research article

Variation in the cortical area map of C57BL/6J and DBA/2J inbred mice predicts strain identity

David C Airey¹ , Alicia I Robbins² , Katherine M Enzinger² , Fangbai Wu² and Christine E Collins²

¹  Department of Pharmacology, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, USA

²  Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA

author email corresponding author email

BMC Neuroscience 2005, 6:18doi:10.1186/1471-2202-6-18

Published:	17 March 2005

Abstract

Background

Recent discoveries suggest that arealization of the mammalian cortical sheet develops in a manner consonant with principles established for embryonic patterning of the body. Signaling centers release morphogens that determine regional growth and tissue identity by regulating regional expression of transcription factors. Research on mouse cortex has identified several candidate morphogens that affect anteroposterior or mediolateral cortical regionalization as well as mitogenesis. Inbred strains of laboratory mice can be exploited to study cortical area map formation if there are significant phenotypic differences with which to correlate gene polymorphism or expression data. Here we describe differences in the cortical area map of two commonly used inbred strains of laboratory mice, C57BL/6J and DBA/2J. Complete cortical hemispheres from adult mice were dissected and stained for the cytochrome oxidase enzyme in order to measure histochemically defined cortical areas.

Results

C57BL/6J has the larger neocortex, relatively larger primary visual cortex (V1), but relatively smaller posterior medial barrel subfield of the primary somatosensory cortex (PMBSF). The sample of C57BL/6J and DBA/2J mice can be discriminated with 90% accuracy on the basis of these three size dimensions.

Conclusion

C57BL/6J and DBA/2J have markedly different cortical area maps, suggesting that inbred strains harbor enough phenotypic variation to encourage a forward genetic approach to understanding cortical development, complementing other approaches.