Experimental Use of CB1 -/- Phenotype
Neuroscientists often utilize transgenic CB1 knock-out mice to discern novel roles for the endocannabinoid system. While CB1 knock-out mice are healthy and live into adulthood, there are significant differences between CB1 knock-out and wild-type mice. When subjected to a high-fat diet, CB1 knockout mice tend to be about sixty percent leaner and slightly less hungry than wildtype. Compared to wildtype, CB1 knock-out mice exhibit severe deficits in motor learning, memory retrieval, and increased difficulty in completing the Morris water maze. There is also evidence indicating that these knockout animals have an increased incidence and severity of stroke and seizure (Parmentier et al., 2002; Marsicano et al., 2003).
Read more about this topic: Endocannabinoid System
Famous quotes containing the word experimental:
“The very hope of experimental philosophy, its expectation of constructing the sciences into a true philosophy of nature, is based on induction, or, if you please, the a priori presumption, that physical causation is universal; that the constitution of nature is written in its actual manifestations, and needs only to be deciphered by experimental and inductive research; that it is not a latent invisible writing, to be brought out by the magic of mental anticipation or metaphysical mediation.”
—Chauncey Wright (1830–1875)