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Genetics of body weight in the LXS recombinant inbred mouse strains

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Abstract

This is the first phenotypic analysis of 75 new recombinant inbred (RI) strains derived from ILS and ISS progenitors. We analyzed body weight in two independent cohorts of female mice at various ages and in males at 60 days. Body weight is a complex trait which has been mapped in numerous crosses in rodents. The LXS RI strains displayed a large range of weights, transgressing those of the inbred progenitors, supporting the utility of this large panel for mapping traits not selected in the progenitors. Numerous QTLs for body weight mapped in single- and multilocus scans. We assessed replication between these and previously reported QTLs based on overlapping confidence intervals of published QTLs for body weight at 60 days and used meta-analyses to determine combined p values for three QTL regions located on Chromosomes 4, 5, and 11. Strain distribution patterns of microsatellite marker genotypes, weight, and other phenotypes are available on WebQTL (http://www.webqtl.org/search.html) and allow genetic mapping of any heritable quantitative phenotype measured in these strains. We report one such analysis, correlating brain and body weights. Large reference panels of RI strains, such as the LXS, are invaluable for identifying genetic correlations, GXE (Gene X Environment) interactions, and replicating previously identified QTLs.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank J. Salazar and J. Wah for careful and reliable animal care and breeding. They also thank Nancy Phares-Zook for her research contributions and for her outstanding job managing our many diverse databases. Linda Lou Wessman, Justin Springett, and Jessica Hall spent many hours weighing mice. The authors also thank their colleagues at IBG and elsewhere who gave advice throughout the study and read the many versions of the manuscript; these include Brad Rikke and Shwu-Yar Tsai. The authors owe a large debt to Drs. Robert W. Williams and Lu Lu at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, for genotyping all LXS strains. Most of all, thanks to Dr. John DeFries for the vision to initiate this RI panel.

This work was supported by funds from the University of Colorado and grants from the NIH (RO1 AA08940, AA11984, and KO1 AA00195). Genotyping costs were supported in part by P20-MH 62009 (a Human Brain Project to Dr. Robert W. Williams) and the INIA Genotyping Core (U24AA13513 to LL and RWW). WebQTL work was supported in part by U01 AA014425-01A1 (to LL).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Behavioral Genetics, 447, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, 80309-0447, USA

    Beth Bennett, Phyllis J. Carosone-Link & Thomas E. Johnson

  2. Center of Genomics and Bioinformatics, Institute of Neuroscience, Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, Tennessee, 38163, USA

    Lu Lu & Elissa J. Chesler

  3. Department of Integrative Physiology, 354, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, 80309-0447, USA

    Thomas E. Johnson

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  1. Beth Bennett
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  2. Phyllis J. Carosone-Link
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  3. Lu Lu
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  4. Elissa J. Chesler
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  5. Thomas E. Johnson
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Correspondence to Beth Bennett.

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Bennett, B., Carosone-Link, P.J., Lu, L. et al. Genetics of body weight in the LXS recombinant inbred mouse strains. Mamm Genome 16, 764–774 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00335-005-0002-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00335-005-0002-6

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