Collaborative Cross MiceUNC DEPARTMENTS OF GENETICS AND COMPUTER SCIENCE
In the beginning, the mice were few and far between. In 2001, over beers at a conference, a group of geneticists dreamt up the ideal resource for systems genetics—a mouse population bursting with genetic diversity, far more than traditional inbred lab strains. Such a resource would better model human diversity and disease in the lab, they surmised. But no one was willing to supply the $50 million they estimated it would cost, so Gary Churchill of the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, began breeding the mice, alone and sans funding, in his lab.
Soon, Churchill had enough mice to ship to collaborators in Tennessee, Kenya, and Australia, who also began the breeding process. Thanks to that dedicated group of scientists, the Collaborative Cross (CC) ...
