Folic Acid Deficiency in BALB/cJ Mice

Unless otherwise specified, studies used male BALB/cJ mice (age 24 or 28 days) bred in-house (St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN; the original breeding pairs were from Jackson Laboratories). Several experiments included BALB/cJ mice directly shipped from Jackson Laboratories (Bar Harbor, ME), or male BALB/cAnNHsd mice (age 24 or 28 days) obtained from Harlan Laboratories (Houston, TX). An irradiated folic-acid deficient diet (purchased from TestDiet, Richmond, IN) containing less than 0.05 ppm folic acid was used [17 (link)]. Prior to the initiation of all experiments, both in-house bred and vendor-derived mice were transferred into a dedicated experimental room where they were maintained in sterile micro-isolator cages (Micro Vent System 75 JAG, Allentown, NJ) and housed on ventilated racks, with up to 5 mice in a cage with corncob bedding (Andersons Bed-O’cobs, Pharmaserv, Framingham, MA). The mice had access to food and water ad libitum.