FIGURE 5.

Novelty suppressed feeding test demonstrates that stress exposure did not greatly alter anxiety in wild-type (WT, black) rats, but did significantly increase anxiety in Krtcap3 knock-out (KO, gray) rats. (A) There was a significant interaction between genotype and group for number of line crossings where stress-exposed (empty) KO rats moved much less than control counterparts (filled) with no changes in WT rats. **p < 0.01 represents effects of stress respective to each genotype. (B) There were no differences in frequency of center approaches between control and stress WT rats, but stress-exposed KO rats approached the center fewer times than controls. **p < 0.01 represents effect of stress for KO rats. (C) For both WT and KO rats, stress-exposed rats spent much less time in the center of the field compared to controls. **p < 0.01 represents a main effect of stress. (D) When directly evaluating latency to feed and time spent feeding, there were ceiling and floor effects that precluded statistical analysis by a two-way ANOVA. Visually, there is little difference between control and stress-exposed WT rats (circle), but a large difference in KO rats (squares). Instead, we re-conceptualized these phenotypes as test participation instead. (E) Stress exposure (dashed line) had little effect on the probability of participation of WT rats compared to control counterparts (solid line), but KO rats exposed to stress were much less likely to consume food during the test compared to controls. *p < 0.05 represents effect of stress for KO rats.