Figure 1. Paternal transmission of stress-induced depression- and anxiety-like behaviors via natural breeding.

(A) Chronic social defeat induced robust social avoidance in male C57Bl6/J mice compared to control non-defeated mice (*p<0.05). Experimental time line of how these mice were then bred with normal females for behavioral analysis of the offspring. (B) Offspring of socially defeated mice displayed robust social avoidance when exposed to a submaximal defeat paradigm (*p<0.05), which produced no such social avoidance in the offspring of control mice. (C-F) Comparisons of offspring of control mice and offspring from fathers both before undergoing social defeat (pre-defeat) and after undergoing social defeat (post-defeat). (C) Male and female offspring of post-defeat offspring only showed an anxiogenic-like phenotype as measured by an increase in time spent in the open arms of the elevated plus maze (*p<0.05). (D) Only the post-defeat male offspring showed an increase in locomotor behavior in a novel environment (*p<0.05). (E) Likewise, in the sucrose preference test, only the post-defeat male offspring exhibited a trend toward a reduction in sucrose preference (#p<0.07). (F) Both male and female post-defeat offspring showed a decrease in latency to become immobile in the forced swim test (*p<0.05), compared to control and pre-defeat offspring. All values represent means ± standard error of the mean. All (*s) are comparisons of pre- and post-defeat offspring.