期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：1998
卷号：95
期号：18
页码：10908-10913
DOI：10.1073/pnas.95.18.10908
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：CCAAT/enhancer binding protein {delta} (C/EBP{delta}) is a transcriptional regulator implicated in the hepatic acute phase response and in adipogenic and myeloid cell differentiation. We found that C/EBP{delta} is widely expressed in the peripheral and central nervous systems, including neurons of the hippocampal formation, indicating a role in neural functions. To examine the role of C/EBP{delta} in vivo, we generated mice with a targeted deletion of the C/EBP{delta} gene. This mutation does not interfere with normal embryonic and postnatal development. Performance in a battery of behavioral tests indicates that basic neurological functions are normal. Furthermore, performance in a Morris water maze task suggests that C/EBP{delta} mutant mice have normal spatial learning. However, in the contextual and auditory-cue-conditioned fear task, C/EBP{delta} null mice displayed significantly more conditioned freezing to the test context than did wild-type controls, but equivalent conditioning to the auditory cue. These data demonstrate a selectively enhanced contextual fear response in mice carrying a targeted genomic mutation and implicate C/EBP{delta} in the regulation of a specific type of learning and memory.
