Tordoff, M.G., Pilchak, D.M., Williams, J.A., McDaniel, A.H., and Bachmanov, A.A. The maintenance diets of C57BL/6J and 129X1/SvJ mice influence their taste solution preferences: Implications for large-scale phenotyping projects. Journal of Nutrition, 132: 2288-2297, 2002

We examined the extent to which maintenance diet influences the taste preferences of mice. C57BL/6J (B6) and 129X1/SvJ (129) mice were fed one of three standard cereal-based diets (Teklad 8604, Zeigler NIH-07, Purina 5001), a cereal-based diet formulated for breeding (Purina 5015), or two semisynthetic diets (AIN-76A or AIN-93G). The mice received 48-h two-bottle choice tests between water and seven taste solutions: 2 mmol/L saccharin, 5 mmol/L citric acid, 50 mmol/L citric acid, 30 µmol/L quinine hydrochloride (QHCl), 300 µmol/L QHCl, 75 mmol/L NaCl, and 10% ethanol. There were very few differences in taste solution preference scores among mice of the same strain fed the three different versions of standard cereal-based diets. There were also very few differences in taste solution preference scores between mice of the same strain fed the two semisynthetic diets. However, the mice fed standard cereal-based diets generally drank more water and total fluid than did mice fed semisynthetic diets. There were larger differences between the B6 and 129 strains in saccharin and ethanol preference scores with mice fed standard cereal-based diets than semisynthetic diets. Conversely, there were larger differences between the B6 and 129 strains in citric acid and NaCl preference scores with mice fed semisynthetic diets than standard cereal-based diets. These results show that maintenance diet composition can have large, strain-dependent effects on taste solution preference. They illustrate that greater attention needs to be paid to the effects of diet on phenotype in screens of mutagenized mice and other genetic studies (PubMed citation)

In fulfillment of NIH requirements that all information is made promptly and freely available to the research community, raw data from the study are available here. Investigators requiring more details are encouraged to contact the authors directly.

Draconian cuts were made in the original submission of this paper to fulfill the reviewers’ requests. This included removing (1) the description of an experiment that involved manipulating the diet sodium content of the mice’s diet, (2) results pertaining to 50 mmol/L citric acid and 300 µmol/L QHCl, and (3) a detailed justification for using z scores based on B6 mice means for analysis of test sensitivity. The original “director’s cut” is available here (in pdf format)..