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  • Review Article
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The mouse as a model for human biology: a resource guide for complex trait analysis

Nature Reviews Genetics volume 8, pages 58–69 (2007)Cite this article

Key Points

  • Mice and humans share 99% of their genes, and so share common diseases.

  • Most common human diseases are complex, or polygenic.

  • Rapidly growing genomic resources in the mouse facilitate complex trait analysis

  • Extensive phenotypic differences exist between inbred strains of mice, as catalogued by the Mouse Phenome Project, Eumorphia Empress and the German Mouse Clinic.

  • Together, mouse genome and phenome advances have provided the resources that are required to rapidly and cost-effectively identify QTLs and narrow QTL confidence intervals.

  • Establishment of the Collaborative Cross promises to add tremendously to our ability to identify genes that underlie QTLs in the future.

Abstract

The mouse has been a powerful force in elucidating the genetic basis of human physiology and pathophysiology. From its beginnings as the model organism for cancer research and transplantation biology to the present, when dissection of the genetic basis of complex disease is at the forefront of genomics research, an enormous and remarkable mouse resource infrastructure has accumulated. This review summarizes those resources and provides practical guidelines for their use, particularly in the analysis of quantitative traits.

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Figure 1: Derivatives of inbred strains.
Figure 2: Search results for Akp2 in the Mouse Genome Informatics (MGI) Mouse GBrowse.
Figure 3: Identification of QTL and narrowing QTL intervals.
Figure 4: Strategies for narrowing QTL confidence intervals.
Figure 5: The Collaborative Cross.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to the US National Institute of General Medical Sciences and the US National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Jackson Laboratory, 600 Main Street, Bar Harbor, 04609, Maine, USA

    Luanne L. Peters, Raymond F. Robledo, Carol J. Bult, Gary A. Churchill, Beverly J. Paigen & Karen L. Svenson

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  1. Luanne L. Peters
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  2. Raymond F. Robledo
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  3. Carol J. Bult
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Correspondence to Luanne L. Peters.

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FURTHER INFORMATION

Deltagen

Deltagen and Lexicon Knockout Mice and Phenotypic Data

Eumorphia EMPReSS

European Conditional Mouse Mutagenesis Program

Genome Variation Server

Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation

German Mouse Clinic

International HapMap Project

Knockout Mouse Project

Lee Silver's Mouse Genetics

Lexicon Genetics

North American Conditional Mouse Mutagenesis Project

Perlegen Sciences

PhysGen

QTL Archive

Roche

Sanger Institute

The Institute for Genome Research

The Jackson Laboratory

Trans-NIH Mouse Initiatives

Glossary

Congenic Strain

A strain that is produced by repeated backcrossing (ten generations) to an inbred strain, with selection for heterozygosity at each generation for a specific locus in the donor strain.

Coisogenic strain

Strains of mice that differ at a single locus. When a spontaneous mutation occurs in an inbred strain, the mutant and the non-mutant mice are coisogenic.

Purkinje cell

Large neurons with highly branched dendritic trees; Purkinje cells provide the only neural output from the cerebellum.

Myelination

The process of the formation of the myelin sheaths of axons.

Short sequence length polymorphic markers

Tandem repeats, usually of 2–3 bp; the number of repeats varies (is polymorphic) depending on the strain.

LOD score

The 'Logarithm of odds' score; the base-10 logarithm of a likelihood ratio (the odds), which is often used in the context of genetic mapping to indicate significance thresholds.

Synteny

Genes that occur in the same order in different species; the chromosomes of the species are then said to be syntenic in those regions.

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Peters, L., Robledo, R., Bult, C. et al. The mouse as a model for human biology: a resource guide for complex trait analysis. Nat Rev Genet 8, 58–69 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg2025

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg2025

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