Rat Genomics Applied to Psychiatric Research

Psychiatric diseases are very debilitating and some of them highly prevalent (e.g., depression or anxiety). The rat remains one model of choice in this discipline to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying normal and pathological traits. Genomic tools are now applied to identify genes involved in psychiatric illnesses and also to provide new biomarkers for diagnostic and prognosis, new targets for treatment and more generally to better understand the functioning of the brain. In this report, we will review rat models, behavioral approaches used to model psychiatry-related traits and the major studies published in the field including genetic mapping of quantitative trait loci (QTL), transcriptomics, proteomics and transgenic models.