Animal Core

ABSTRACT—ANIMAL CORE The goal of the Center is to provide complex metabolic, physiologic, and behavioral phenotyping and consulting services to characterize living mouse models on a fair fee-for-service basis. To do so requires a Center to receive, house, feed, monitor, and maintain the health of mice submitted for phenotyping by investigators. Therefore, the Animal Core will import and provide optimal husbandry care and high-quality animal health services for mice sent and enrolled for testing at the Center, provide a number of specialty services, including surgical manipulation services, molecular, and pathology, upon request, and make facilitate access to disease-relevant mouse models from repositories or derive and create mouse models of diabetes and/or obesity de novo for testing at the Center. The Animal Core will be staffed by a Leader, co-Leader, and Core Coordinator. The Animal Core will fulfill its mission by pursuing the following 3 Specific Aims: Specific Aim 1: Receive, house, feed, monitor and maintain health of mice. Specific Aim 2: Manage, organize, and coordinate movement of mice for phenotyping. Specific Aim 3: Expand utilization of the Center to investigators with or without mice. The Animal Core will have the institutional resources and authority to import and acclimate mice meeting certain minimal health standards for further phenotypic analysis with minimal delay into dedicated vivarium facilities. This high-throughput and multifunctional Core will broaden the availability of metabolic models and phenotyping tests by enabling investigator mice to be analyzed, expediting data generation and interpretation, and ultimately complete testing projects in a timely fashion and for reasonable cost.