Dr. Oliver Ambrée & Univ.-Prof. Dr. Weiqi Zhang

Genes and environment act together in forming behavioral traits throughout life. The same is true for the manifestation of psychiatric illness: The individual risk for psychiatric illness is composed of the interplay of genetic susceptibility and environmental factors such as prenatal infection, childhood abuse, stressful life events and many more. Until now the underlying mechanisms of these gene-environment interactions are not understood.Here we study genetic and environmental influences on behavioral endophenotypes of psychiatric diseases in mice as model system. Mice are raised under different environmental conditions including standard laboratory housing, environmental enrichment or chronic stress.(1) We investigate the influence of these housing conditions on behavioral traits, in particular spatial reference and working memory, sociability, prepulse inhibition, anxiety-like behavior and locomotor reaction to psychostimulants. It is hypothesized that an enriched environment improves behavioral endophenotypes and that chronic stress exacerbates them.(2) We further analyze morphological changes as response to different environmental conditions such as synapse density or hippocampal neurogenesis.(3) And finally, we want to identify the molecular substrates, i.e. genes and proteins that underlie the behavioral and morphological changes.The understanding of the molecular mechanisms of psychiatric endophenotypes provides the basis of the systematic development of novel pharmacological agents with improved efficiency and lesser side effects.