Catálogo de Investigaciones | 2011-2012

47 Catálogo de Investigaciones | Pontificia Universidad Católica de Puerto Rico Metabotropic Glutamate Receptor Antagonist, MCPG at different doses affect social and circling behavior in zebrafish The zebrafish (Danio rerio) has been at the forefront of neurological research. The reason behind this is its easy handling, high yield progeny and efficient drug delivery, all of these makes this organism a perfect model to use in biomedical research. In addition, zebrafish central nervous system development closely resembles other vertebrates. Moreover, zebrafish shares more similar features to humans than other genetically homologous models, such as Drosophila. However, the anatomical complexity is lesser as compared to other animal model as rodents. Zebrafish is relative new in the study of learning and memory, it has been shown acquisition of a one trial avoidance in learning task, olfactory conditioning, alternation memory task and plus maze non-spatial and special associative learning task. The metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluRs) has been known to be important during development of the central nervous system and plasticity which includes long term potentiation (LTP) and long term depression (LTD). It has been shown that the mGluRs contributes to regulation of the phosphorylation status of the NMDA receptor in mice. In addition, it has been demonstrated that NMDA are important in social behavior in zebrafish. Therefore, in this work I am proposing to test whether mGluRs has an effect on social behavior and motor skills in zebrafish. In this research it will fallow a series of dose response experiments in which zebrafish will be expose to mGluRs, a non-selective mGluRs I and II antagonist. In addition, will tested circling behavior, top time, erratic swimming and immobility during drug exposure (30 minutes) and after drug exposure (30 minutes). In addition, zebrafish are naturally sociable organisms. Therefore, I am interest to test whether mGluRshas an effect in social behavior. In these experiments, it will be selected lowest and the highest dose (non-lethal) to test the effect in MCPG in shoaling behavior. The subject expose to the drug (30 min) and immediately after will be tested. This novel research experiment; no prior evidence of mGluRs effect has been reported to affect motor or social behavior using zebrafish. pedro colón y roberto de león mentor dra. zaida mateo mayol mglurs behavior social zebrafish mcpg