The dorsal striatum (DS) has received increased attention in the addiction field over recent years given its significant role in action selection and specific relevance to goal-directed and habitual behaviors, extremes of which may foster the development of AUD (Ma et al. 2017; Yin & Knowlton 2006; Corbit et al. 2012). Differential functioning of the DS as a result of differential gene and protein expression between the HAP and LAP mice may contribute to the observed divergent alcohol consumption in these lines. A recent study by our lab examined functional neurophysiological differences between alcohol-naïve HAP and LAP mice, specifically within the DS. We found significant differences in both excitatory and inhibitory DS neurotransmission between the HAP and LAP lines (Fritz et al. 2019). Although the HAP and LAP lines have distinct excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmission profiles in the DS, the mechanisms of these observations are not clear. To begin to elucidate explanations for these functional differences, DS tissue from both male and female, alcohol-naïve HAP and LAP mice was subjected to a thorough RNA-sequencing analysis and quantitative proteomic analyses of both global protein and phosphorylated peptide expression.
