Marissa Mueller, Selma Tir, Carina Pothecary, Elise Meijer, Laurence Brown, Keiran Foster, Vladyslav Vyazovskiy, Stuart Peirson, Zoltán Molnár
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background: Accurately measuring activity and feeding is important in laboratory animal research, whether for welfare-monitoring or experimental recording. Quantification commonly involves manual pellet-weighing; however, this can physically disturb animals and cannot continuously assess both the amount and pattern of feeding over time. Improved means of food-intake measurement have been developed but can be costly and incompatible with many cage configurations.
Methods: We developed the SnackerTracker-a novel home-cage monitoring system which continuously records food-intake, food-seeking activity, and ambient light conditions in laboratory mice. After benchtop validations, we tested this device by recording from C57BL/6J control mice under 12:12h light:dark (LD) and constant darkness (DD) to measure circadian rhythms in feeding behaviour. We then recorded from mice having disturbed circadian rhythms (cryptochrome 1 and 2 double-knockouts, Cry1 -/-,Cry2 -/- ), where irregular activity and feeding patterns were expected. Animals were individually housed with SnackerTrackers in Digital Ventilated Cages ® (DVC, Tecniplast) to measure home cage activity. After habituation, 48-hour SnackerTracker and DVC recordings were collected and compared.
Results: The SnackerTracker accurately measured food-masses throughout benchtop and in vivo validation tests. Time-course SnackerTracker feeding traces correlated well with DVC activity recordings, indicating that feeding reflects general cage locomotion in control and cryptochrome-deficient animals. In LD, SnackerTracker data showed expected feeding/fasting cycles in control and cryptochrome-deficient animals yet reduced dark-phase feeding in cryptochrome-deficient mice. In DD, increased feeding during the subjective nighttime was maintained in control animals but abolished in cryptochrome-deficient mice. Surprisingly, cryptochrome-deficient animals exhibited ultradian feeding rhythms.
Conclusions: We validate the performance and value of monitoring home cage feeding using the SnackerTracker. Here we show that cryptochrome-deficient animals have decreased food-intake in LD, diurnal arrhythmicity in DD, and ultradian rhythms in feeding behaviour. The SnackerTracker provides a cost-effective, open-source, and user-friendly method of animal food intake and activity measurement.
Wellcome Open ResearchBiochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology-Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology (all)
CiteScore
5.50
自引率
0.00%
发文量
426
审稿时长
1 weeks
期刊介绍：
Wellcome Open Research publishes scholarly articles reporting any basic scientific, translational and clinical research that has been funded (or co-funded) by Wellcome. Each publication must have at least one author who has been, or still is, a recipient of a Wellcome grant. Articles must be original (not duplications). All research, including clinical trials, systematic reviews, software tools, method articles, and many others, is welcome and will be published irrespective of the perceived level of interest or novelty; confirmatory and negative results, as well as null studies are all suitable. See the full list of article types here. All articles are published using a fully transparent, author-driven model: the authors are solely responsible for the content of their article. Invited peer review takes place openly after publication, and the authors play a crucial role in ensuring that the article is peer-reviewed by independent experts in a timely manner. Articles that pass peer review will be indexed in PubMed and elsewhere. Wellcome Open Research is an Open Research platform: all articles are published open access; the publishing and peer-review processes are fully transparent; and authors are asked to include detailed descriptions of methods and to provide full and easy access to source data underlying the results to improve reproducibility.
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