Lab mouse genome isn't simple High-resolution study
shows complex structure is bad news for QTL mapping By
Cathy Holding
The patterns of variation between genomes of standard
laboratory inbred mice are not as simple as generally
believed, according to a team reporting in PNAS. The results
suggest that researchers will be forced to use other methods
in quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping, as gene
identification will become "not impossible, but more
challenging," said Richard Mott, who led the study with
Jonathan Flint at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human
Genetics, Oxford.
"Inbred strains are great in the sense that they're
completely homozygous," said Mott. But laboratory mice were
bred originally by amateur scientists who used anything they
could catch, said Mott. "They weren't created, generally
speaking, for genetic research. The question is, if you look
at the genomes of these inbred strains in detail, how do
they differ?"
Mott and his team sequenced about 12% of a 4.8-megabase
region known to contain a QTL affecting anxiety in each of
eight inbred strains, in pieces distributed fairly uniformly
to ensure a good sampling of the region at high resolution.
"Essentially, we were sampling every 10 kb," said Mott.
Mott's team investigated whether the same group of
strains of inbred mice showed one variant while the other
group showed a different variant-the simplest picture of
genome variation-based on data from low-level scans of
the mouse genomes.
Read the rest at The Scientist
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