Credit: Lin, CW., Ellegood, J., Tamada, K. et al. An old model with new insights: endogenous retroviruses drive the evolvement toward ASD susceptibility and hijack transcription machinery during development. Mol Psychiatry (2023).
a. Brain structure comparisons of the following mice: Left: BTBR/R and B6 (normal mouse), Center: Comparison of BTBR/J and B6, Right: BTBR/J and BTBR/R. b. Diffusion tensor imaging to compare differences in nerve fibers. Red indicates the brain regions that were either bigger or had increased numbers of nerve fibers in BTBR/J mice in comparison to either B6 (left and center images) or BTBR/R (right image). Conversely, blue indicates brain regions in BTBR/J mice that were comparatively smaller or had decreased numbers of nerve fibers. These scans revealed particularly significant differences between BTBR/J and BTBR/R mice’s corpus callosum.