? Animal & Validation Core B The overarching goals and responsibilities of the Animal & Validation Core B are to provide transgenic rodents with uniform histories of contingent drug delivery to the Center on Opioid and Cocaine Addiction (COCA) projects and validate the reagents and transgenic animals that are used. As such, Core B is a critical component of COCA synergy between Core C, and Projects 1-3 in the COCA by providing research subjects. The rodents include age-matched male and female rats and mice that have undergone cocaine, heroin, or sucrose self-administration and that are distributed to the projects for subsequent use according to each projects aims. Animals supplied by Core B include transgenic mice and rats for determining cell-type and circuit specificity relevant to the neurobiology of addiction. The unified Core B provides an efficient rotation of laboratory animals that creates synergy between the projects. In addition to rodents, Core B promotes synergy through the production of custom AAV viral vectors, verification of viral vector efficacy and cell specific expression, and quantitative co-localization analysis. In providing the validation services and transgenic rodents, the Animal Core B will meet the following additional objectives: 1. Maintain a high quality of technical assistance through rigorous training protocols designed with strict adherence to all institutional guidelines regarding health and safety in order to guarantee consistency of handling and ensure we are generating the healthiest subjects for our experimental purposes. 2. Establish a centralized record keeping system updated on the COCA server that aids in the transparency and dissemination of data to allow for comparisons between behavioral data and the endpoint evaluations conducted by the projects. 3. Provide a database of confirmed reagents uploaded onto the public and private COCA servers in order to identify and unify solutions for common issues associated with validation of new reagents. 4. Serve as a training center for MUSC and non-MUSC personal interested in establishing contingent models of drug delivery in their laboratories for rats and mice. 5. Become a resource for personnel needing guidance on the use of viral vector plasmids, establishing cell-type specificity, validating transgenic animals, and using quantitative colocalization techniques.
