Animal Production Core

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Alcohol and other substance abuse continue to be enormous public health issues with total costs in the US approaching a half billion dollars a year. Although there are major attempts at prevention, a better understanding of the genetic and environmental factors that increase the risk of alcohol use disorders, the neural circuits that underlie this risk, and the ability to regulate these circuits therapeutically are all still critically needed. In addressing this critical need, this Animal Production Core will continue to provide the P and HAD1 rats, along with cHAP mice that have been selectively bred for high voluntary alcohol, to investigators in the Indiana Alcohol Research Center (IARC) or on the Indiana University–Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI) campus. These lines are unusual among rodents due to their excessive alcohol intake, with cHAP mice, for example, reaching BECs over 250 mg/dl during simple voluntary alcohol access. We will also maintain colonies of LAP3, along with non-selectively bred Wistar rats and inbred C57Bl/6J mice for comparison purposes. This Core is the outgrowth of over 30 years of experience with selective breeding, maintenance of breeding colonies, and solving problems arising with the logistics and nature of running an operation of this magnitude. We are therefore uniquely qualified in the coming funding period to continue to provide these animals to alcoholism and addiction researchers, to coordinate the use of the animals to avoid scientific overlap, and to manage issues that could affect their phenotype and associated behaviors. The Animal Production Core will continue to characterize these lines as animal models of addiction and promote their use in examining the genetic and neurobiological substrates of substance use, abuse and dependence.