WIKIMEDIA, MAGGIE BARTLETT, NHGRIAs many a researcher can attest, not all mice are created equal. Different strains’ genetic backgrounds can greatly influence the outcomes of experiments. To take an example well-known to mouse geneticists, when the gene Apc (adenomatous polyposis coli) is mutated in C57BL/6J mice, the mice develop colon polyps; but the same genetic change, called the “Min mutation,” has almost no ill effects when introduced in another strain, AKR/J. The same experiment produced different results merely because of the strain of lab mice, explains University of Wisconsin geneticist Amy Moser, who worked on the Min mutation.
Now, scientists can better resolve what genes are responsible for such strain-related discrepancies. Reporting today (August 7) in PNAS, Ghent University researchers have published a database of proteins predicted to be nonfunctional in the 36 most popular and important inbred strains of laboratory mice. The database, says Moser, who was not involved in the work, may help researchers better understand their mice and, hopefully, design better experiments as a result.
The study authors Steven Timmermans, Marc Van Montagu, and Claude Libert have compared the coding sequences of the go-to lab mouse C57BL/6J (black 6) to 36 other laboratory strains and, based on these data, determined which of their proteins are likely to be defective.
Scientists began inbreeding mice, through brother-sister mating at every generation, about ...
