Access

Article

Nature Genetics 38, 879–887 (1 August 2006) | doi:10.1038/ng1840

Genome-wide genetic association of complex traits in heterogeneous stock mice

William Valdar , Leah C Solberg , Dominique Gauguier , Stephanie Burnett , Paul Klenerman , William O Cookson , Martin S Taylor , J Nicholas P Rawlins , Richard Mott & Jonathan Flint

Difficulties in fine-mapping quantitative trait loci (QTLs) are a major impediment to progress in the molecular dissection of complex traits in mice. Here we show that genome-wide high-resolution mapping of multiple phenotypes can be achieved using a stock of genetically heterogeneous mice. We developed a conservative and robust bootstrap analysis to map 843 QTLs with an average 95% confidence interval of 2.8 Mb. The QTLs contribute to variation in 97 traits, including models of human disease (asthma, type 2 diabetes mellitus, obesity and anxiety) as well as immunological, biochemical and hematological phenotypes. The genetic architecture of almost all phenotypes was complex, with many loci each contributing a small proportion to the total variance. Our data set, freely available at http://gscan.well.ox.ac.uk, provides an entry point to the functional characterization of genes involved in many complex traits.