Evidence map›Paper›PMID 42063742›Full record

ArticleFrontiers in behavioral neuroscience2026

Substrain-specific behavioral variation in female C57BL/6 and C57BL/10 mice.

Celine L St Pierre, Natalia M Gonzales, Greta Sokoloff, Oksana Polesskaya

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In one paragraph

Article in Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

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0citing papers in PubMed
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1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

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3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

0 citing papers in PubMed.

No citing paper in PubMed yet.

4 · The record

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PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Celine L St PierreSection of Genetic Medicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States.
Natalia M GonzalesSection of Genetic Medicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States.
Greta SokoloffDepartment of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, IA, United States.
Oksana PolesskayaDepartment of Psychiatry, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, United States.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Introduction: Inbred mouse strains are essential to biomedical research, yet accumulating mutations and substrain divergence introduce phenotypic variability that can confound experimental outcomes. This study investigates behavioral differences among 13 inbred mouse substrains: eight C57BL/6 (B6) and five C57BL/10 (B10), bred in-house to control for environmental effects. Methods: Female F1 offspring underwent a standardized battery of behavioral assays-open field test (OFT), locomotor response to cocaine (LOCO), fear conditioning (FC), prepulse inhibition (PPI), and the forced swim test (FST)-chosen for their relevance to models of psychiatric and substance use disorders. Results: Significant substrain-specific differences were observed across all behaviors. In the OFT, B6 substrains such as C57BL/6J showed higher activity than others, while B10 substrains exhibited distinct edge-zone preference patterns. Cocaine-induced locomotor stimulation varied significantly among B6 substrains but not among B10. In FC, substrain differences emerged in pre-training, contextual, and cued freezing behavior, particularly among B10 substrains. PPI testing revealed substrain-dependent variation in acoustic startle responses, with C57BL/10J displaying consistently lower startle amplitudes. In the FST, substrain-specific differences in swimming velocity and high mobility duration and frequency were found within the B6 group, while swimming distance showed substrain variation within the B10 group. Discussion: These findings demonstrate substantial phenotypic variability among closely related substrains, underscoring the critical importance of substrain selection in behavioral research. By focusing on female mice (a group underrepresented in prior work), this study addresses an essential gap and provides insights for researchers designing preclinical models of psychiatric disorders. The results provide the basis for studies in reduced complexity crosses to identify causal genetic variants underlying behavioral traits.

Indexed as

C57BL/10C57BL/6fear conditioningforced swim testlocomotor response to cocaineprepulse inhibitionsensorimotor gating

Identifiers

PMID42063742
PMCPMC13125034

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.