LXS Published Database

    Summary:

The set of 77 LXS recombinant inbred strains were generated at the Institute for Behavioral Genetics (University of Colorado, Boulder) by Beth Bennett, John DeFries, Tom Johnson, and colleages. Strains first became available for phenotyping in 2003. The large size of this panel ensures good power in genetic studies of a wide variety of complex traits.

    About the subjects:

The parental strains of the LXS set are Inbred Long-Sleep (ILS) and Inbred Short-Sleep (ISS) strains. These parental strains have been phenotyped intensively by behavioral geneticists and neuropharmacologists for a decade (e.g., Markel PD et al. 1995, Hanania and Zahniser 2004. The LXS strains have an intriguing history and trace back to an 8-way cross initiated in the 1950s by Gerald McClearn, the dean of mouse behavior genetics.

The LXS panel has recently been genotyped at 330 microsatellite markers, and this panel can already be used to map Mendelian and quantitative trait loci. As an example, the current prototype LXS phenotype database contains information on coat color treated as an ordinal trait (1 = albino, 5 = black). This simple trait produces a QTL with an LRS score of 73 (LOD score of ~16) on Chr 7 with a peak within a few megabases of the tyrosinase gene.

    Submitting data and reporting errors:

The utility of this resource increases greatly as new phenotypes are added to the database. To submit new data or report errors, please contact Beth Bennett at bennettb@colorado.edu or Lu Lu at a href="mailto:lulu@nb.utmem.edu">lulu@nb.utmem.edu.

    Acknowledgments:

The initial construction of this database was performed by Beth Bennett and colleagues at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and by Lu Lu and colleagues at the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center.

    About this file:

The file started, Oct 31, 2004 by RWW. Last update by RWW, Oct 31, 2004. RWW, JLP, Mar 31, 2005.