We can say, however, that they display behaviors consistent with schizophrenia and should be very useful in studying it. A report on the research appears in the Aug. 20 issue of the journal Cell. Besides Mohn, a UNC-CH Curriculum in Genetics and Molecular Biology graduate, authors are Drs. Most recent previous research has looked at a transmitter called dopamine, but our paper describes the importance of what's called the NMDA receptor. NMDA receptors are a subgroup of glutamate receptors known to play critical roles in nerve development and physiology, she said.
Neurotransmitters are small molecules that signal nerve cells to fire.
The new genetically engineered mice survive to adulthood and behave abnormally by repeating various activities such as grooming and interact poorly with other mice in social and sexual situations, the scientist said. Affected females often don't produce offspring but neglect their young when they do give birth. We created it in part to test the idea that schizophrenia may actually result from decreased function of NMDA receptors even though drugs currently used act on the dopamine system. The surprising thing is that we can generate these mice that have symptoms like schizophrenia by targeting a different neurotransmitter system. Mohn and Koller created the mice in Chapel Hill by altering genes in mouse embryonic stem cells, implanting the cells in new embryos and then transferring the embryos into foster mothers where they developed.