Molecular genetic analysis of mammalian behavior and brain processes: caveats and perspectives

Single gene manipulation allows one to create mutant mammalian organisms that may be useful for genetic dissection of mechanisms underlying brain function and behavior. Alterations in a mutant organism may be directly related to the mutation or due to compensatory mechanisms. Analysis of these responses may reveal molecular organization of the brain. However, the results of several recent molecular neurobiology studies are difficult to interpret since they are flawed by the problems resulting from genetic linkage of and variability in background genes. The behavioral analysis of mutant mice may also be uninterpretable if one ignores species-specific characteristics of the experimental animals.