Mining the brain metabolome to understand behavioural disruptions induced in mouse fed Hypochoeris radicata (L.), a neurotoxic plant for horse.

The research investigates how feeding mice with Hypochoeris radicata (HR), a plant that is neurotoxic to horses, affects the brain chemistry and behavior of the mice. This study is significant as mice are used as models for studying the neurological disease known as Australian stringhalt in horses.

Research Objectives and Approach

• The research aimed to gauge the changes in the brain’s metabolic makeup (brain metabolome) and behavioural patterns of mice fed with a 9% HR-based diet for three weeks.
• The researchers performed multiple tests on the mice to assess motor activity and well-being, anxiety levels, memory and learning capabilities, and social behavior.
• Post these tests, the mice were sacrificed, and their brains were subject to NMR spectroscopy for in-depth metabolomic analysis.

Findings and Conclusions

• The HR-fed mice exhibited increased motor activity, lesser resignation in swimming tests indicative of better stress endurance, and showed a preference for the plant, suggesting that HR might hold rewarding properties for the mice.
• An advanced analytical method, bootstrap-based regularized canonical analysis, was employed to process the overlapping behavioral and metabolic data. The results showed a distinct correlation in treated mice, indicating a rise in cerebral scyllo-inositol, elevated motor activity, and rewarding attributes of HR.
• In essence, the study underscores that this combinatorial approach of behavioral and metabolic observations might be a valuable strategy to unravel how HR consumption causes the Australian stringhalt, a neurological ailment in horses—using the mice model for human understanding.