Research Question

Project Goal

The primary goal of this experiment is to explore the contribution of Gprasp1 shRNA knockdown in the mPFC in male and female C57BL/6J mice

Predictions

It is hypothesized that increased expression of Gprasp1 in the female mouse brain will contribute to sex differences in alcohol consumption through the regulation of GPCR signaling. We therefore expect alcohol drinking to be reduced in male mice with Gprasp1 knockdown in the mPFC. We also expect that these effects may become more apparent after multiple weeks of drinking, given previous observations that sex chromosome effects interact with alcohol exposure history. We anticipate the scramble shRNA virus to have no effect on Gprasp1 expression. As this negative control expresses a scrambled version of the shRNA sequence, it is thought to be ineffective in the knockdown of our target gene.

The promising results thus far with Gprasp1 demonstrate the utility of studying sex differences in behavior, as this line of work has led us to uncover a potentially novel target with therapeutic efficacy.