Deficit in Social Relationships and Reduced Field of Interest in Mice

Construct Validity and Cross Validity of a Test Battery Modeling Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in Mice

Modeling in other organism species is one of the crucial stages in ascertaining the association between gene and psychiatric disorder. Testing Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in mice is very popular but construct validity of the batteries is not available. We presented here the first factor analysis of a behavioral model of ASD-like in mice coupled with empirical validation. We defined fourteen measures aligning mouse-behavior measures with the criteria defined by DSM-5 for the diagnostic of ASD. Sixty-five mice belonging to a heterogeneous pool of genotypes were tested. Reliability coefficients vary from .68 to .81. The factor analysis resulted in a three- factor solution in line with DSM criteria: social behavior, stereotypy and narrowness of the field of interest. The empirical validation with mice sharing a haplo-insufficiency of the zinc-finger transcription factor TSHZ3/Tshz3 associated with ASD shows the discriminant power of the highly loaded items.

Measuring Preweaning Sensorial and Motor Development in the Mouse

The immaturity at birth and the slowness of ontogenic processes in mice provide the opportunity to measure rates of development. We describe here 18 measures covering the sensorial and motor onset from birth to weaning. The measures are non-invasive, making a follow-up strategy possible. The first basic protocol indicates how to produce mice with known conceptional or chronological age, as the control of the age is a prerequisite to compare rates of development in groups of mice. The second basic protocol describes a set of methods for identifying the pups during a follow-up study. A third basic protocol describes testing newborn mice for the appearance of sensorial and motor abilities in a follow-up design. Taken together, the three protocols make possible the validation of potential murine models of interest for understanding human developmental disorders. © 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

TSHZ3 deletion causes an autism syndrome and defects in cortical projection neurons

TSHZ3, which encodes a zinc-finger transcription factor, was recently positioned as a hub gene in a module of the genes with the highest expression in the developing human neocortex, but its functions remained unknown. Here we identify TSHZ3 as the critical region for a syndrome associated with heterozygous deletions at 19q12-q13.11, which includes autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In Tshz3-null mice, differentially expressed genes include layer-specific markers of cerebral cortical projection neurons (CPNs), and the human orthologs of these genes are strongly associated with ASD. Furthermore, mice heterozygous for Tshz3 show functional changes at synapses established by CPNs and exhibit core ASD-like behavioral abnormalities. These findings highlight essential roles for Tshz3 in CPN development and function, whose alterations can account for ASD in the newly defined TSHZ3 deletion syndrome.