UC San Diego

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is characterized by the extensive loss of nigrostriatal dopaminergic neurons, leading to the substantial motor deficits which is usually served as a major diagnostic symptom. Recent studies have shown that alpha-synuclein (Syn-1) over-expresses in the brains of patients with PD, and Masliah lab in UCSD has developed a mouse model to study the Syn-1 expression. This mouse model is called Line 61, which accumulates wild-type human Syn-1 under the Thy-1 promoter. Here, we have further categorized the Line 61 mice by their coat colors (black and grey) in order to standardize this mouse group and highlight the importance of mouse selection in research using multi-color mouse models. We found that grey mice had significantly shorter latency to fall in the rotarod test and significant more Syn-1 and pSyn in CA1 than black mice, suggesting that future research doing behavioral tests with multi-color mice should consider the effect of coat color and limit to the mice with only one coat color.