Recent microarray studies identified hundreds of genes and functional pathways that may be involved in regulation of alcohol drinking in mice (Mulligan et al., 2006; Tabakoff et al., 2008), rats (Kimpel et al., 2007) or humans (Liu et al., 2006, 2007; Flatscher-Bader et al., 2008), providing numerous candidates for functional (behavioral or biological) validation. The studies in mice and rats identified innate differences between alcohol-preferring and -nonpreferring animals based on voluntary ethanol intake in a two-bottle choice paradigm, while the human studies examined differences in gene expression between human alcoholics and controls. Because multiple genes were identified, prioritization of targets for functional validation is challenging. Our approach was to select candidates based on converging validity of genes and pathways commonly regulated across different related data sets, with the goal of discovering novel genes not previously implicated in the behavior. This informatics analysis led to the selection of six genes related to neuroimmune pathways.
