We hypothesize that the trisomy 21 (Down syndrome) is the additive and interactive outcome of the triple copy of different regions of HSA21. Because of the small number of patients with partial trisomy 21, we addressed the question in the Mouse in which three chromosomal regions located on MMU10, MMU17 and MMU16 carries almost all the HSA21 homologs. Male mice from four segmental trisomic strains covering the D21S17-ETS2 (syntenic to MMU16) were examined with an exhaustive battery of cognitive tests, motor tasks and MRI and compared with TS65Dn that encompasses D21S17-ETS2. None of the four strains gather all the impairments (measured by the effect size) of TS65Dn strain. The 152F7 strain was close to TS65Dn for motor behavior and reference memory and the three other strains 230E8, 141G6 and 285E6 for working memory. Episodic memory was impaired only in strain 285E6. The hippocampus and cerebellum reduced sizes that were seen in all the strains indicate that trisomy 21 is not only a hippocampus syndrome but that it results from abnormal interactions between the two structures.
Keywords: Cognition; D21S17-ETS2 region; Effect size; MRI; Protein–protein interactions; Trisomy 21.