High-Diversity Mouse Populations for Complex Traits.

Michael C Saul, The Jackson Laboratory
Vivek M. Philip, The Jackson Laboratory
Laura G Reinholdt, The Jackson Laboratory
Center for Systems Neurogenetics of Addiction
Elissa J Chesler, The Jackson Laboratory

Abstract

Contemporary mouse genetic reference populations are a powerful platform to discover complex disease mechanisms. Advanced high-diversity mouse populations include the Collaborative Cross (CC) strains, Diversity Outbred (DO) stock, and their isogenic founder strains. When used in systems genetics and integrative genomics analyses, these populations efficiently harnesses known genetic variation for precise and contextualized identification of complex disease mechanisms. Extensive genetic, genomic, and phenotypic data are already available for these high-diversity mouse populations and a growing suite of data analysis tools have been developed to support research on diverse mice. This integrated resource can be used to discover and evaluate disease mechanisms relevant across species.