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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Aging Neurosci.
Sec. Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias
Volume 16 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2024.1517416
This article is part of the Research Topic Brain Cell Types, Circuits and Disorders View all articles

Octodon degus laboratory colony management principles and methods for behavioral analysis for Alzheimer's disease neuroscience research

Provisionally accepted
Robert J.M. Deacon Robert J.M. Deacon 1B. Maximiliano Garduño B. Maximiliano Garduño 2Todd Holmes Todd Holmes 3Xiangmin Xu Xiangmin Xu 2,4,5*Patricia Cogram Patricia Cogram 1,4*
  • 1 Department of Ecological Sciences, Faculty of Sciences, Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile, Santiago, Chile
  • 2 Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, School of Medicine, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, United States
  • 3 Department of Physiology and Biophysics, School of Medicine, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California, United States
  • 4 The Center for Neural Circuit Mapping, Irvine, California, United States
  • 5 Institute for Memory Impairment and Neurological Disorders, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The Chilean degu (Octodon degus) is a medium sized, long-lived rodent with traits that make them a natural model for neuroscience research. Their social behaviors, diurnality, and extended developmental time course, when compared to other rodents, make them useful for social behavioral, chronobiology, and developmental research. Lab-kept degus have a long lifespan (5-8 years) and may naturally develop age-related diseases that resemble Alzheimer’s disease. While there is significant interest in using the Octodon degus for neuroscience research, including aging and Alzheimer's disease studies, laboratory management and methods for degus are currently not standardized. This lack of standardization potentially impacts study reproducibility and makes it difficult to compare results between different laboratories. Degus require species-specific housing and handling methods that reflect their ecology, life history, and group-living characteristics. Here we introduce major principles and ethological considerations of colony management and husbandry. We provide clear instructions on laboratory practices necessary for maintaining a healthy and robust colony of degus for Alzheimer's disease neuroscience research towards conducting reproducible studies. We also report detailed procedures and methodical information for degu Apoe genotyping and ethologically relevant burrowing behavioral tasks in laboratory settings.

    Keywords: Octodon degus, husbandry, standard operating procedures, Alzheimer's disease, Animal Models

    Received: 30 Oct 2024; Accepted: 23 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Deacon, Garduño, Holmes, Xu and Cogram. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Xiangmin Xu, Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, School of Medicine, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, United States
    Patricia Cogram, Department of Ecological Sciences, Faculty of Sciences, Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.