{"id":159964,"date":"2023-03-09T23:23:33","date_gmt":"2023-03-10T05:23:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/03\/researchers-create-mutant-mice-to-study-bipolar-disorder"},"modified":"2023-03-09T23:23:33","modified_gmt":"2023-03-10T05:23:33","slug":"researchers-create-mutant-mice-to-study-bipolar-disorder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/03\/researchers-create-mutant-mice-to-study-bipolar-disorder","title":{"rendered":"Researchers create mutant mice to study bipolar disorder"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/researchers-create-mutant-mice-to-study-bipolar-disorder3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Bipolar disorder (BD) is a debilitating condition characterized by alternating states of depression (known as depressive episodes) and abnormal excitement or irritability (known as manic episodes). Large-scale genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have revealed that variations in the genes present on the fatty acid desaturase (FADS) locus are linked to an increased risk of BD.<\/p>\n<p>Enzymes coded by FADS genes\u2014FADS1 and FADS2\u2014convert or \u201cbiosynthesize\u201d omega-3 <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/fatty+acids\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">fatty acids<\/a> into the different forms required by the human body. Omega-3 fatty acids like <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/eicosapentaenoic+acid\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">eicosapentaenoic acid<\/a> (EPA) and <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/docosahexaenoic+acid\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">docosahexaenoic acid<\/a> (DHA) are crucial for the brain to function, and a reduction in the synthesizing activity of these molecules seems to increase susceptibility to bipolar mood swings.<\/p>\n<p>Research on most diseases involves establishment of an animal model of the disease. So, keeping this knowledge in mind, a team of researchers including Dr. Takaoki Kasahara and Hirona Yamamoto from RIKEN Brain Science Institute and Dr. Tadafumi Kato from Juntendo University in Japan, used CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing to create <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/mutant+mice\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">mutant mice<\/a> that lack both Fads1 and Fads2 genes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bipolar disorder (BD) is a debilitating condition characterized by alternating states of depression (known as depressive episodes) and abnormal excitement or irritability (known as manic episodes). Large-scale genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have revealed that variations in the genes present on the fatty acid desaturase (FADS) locus are linked to an increased risk of BD. Enzymes [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159964\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}