International Mammalian Genome Society

The 15th International Mouse Genome Conference (2001)

Table of Contents * Complex Genetics * Developmental Genetics * Gene Annotation * Gene Discovery * Genome Sequencing * Functional Genomics * Mutagenesis * Presentations * Verne Chapman Memorial Lecture

Ms Aya Sugyo
National Institute of Radiological Sciences
4-9-1, Anagawa, Inage-ku
Chiba
263-8555
Japan

Co-Authors: Nishimura, M.; Shimada, Y.; Nagai, J.; Imai, T. and Harada, Y.-N.
Institutions: Low Dose Radiation Effects Project, Research Center for Radiation safety, and RadGenomics Project, Frontier Research Center, National Institute of Radiological Sciences

Genetic factors may affect to every human disease in various ways. In the post-genomic era, the laboratory rat, as well as the laboratory mouse, will play an important role in understanding the function of mammalian genes. Gene-targeting for mouse embryonic stem cells is a very powerful technique to know the function of genes in vitro. Unfortunately, such technique has not established in the laboratory rat yet. As the situation now stands, mutagenesis using chemical mutagens must be the most possible way to generate new rat mutants.

For the first step to carry out the mutagenesis in rats, we analyzed genetic profiles for 47 microsatellite loci of 7 rat strains. Every microsatellite marker was detected by PCR using a pair of specific primers. Rates of loci with different alleles from BN strain  were 55.3% for F344, 51.1% for COP, 48.9% for DON, 46.8% for WKY, 48.9% for SD, and 48.9% for ACI strain. Then we analyzed more 36 microsatellite markers for BN, F344, and COP strains. Total rates of loci with different alleles from BN strain were 56.6% for F344 and 53.7% for COP. From these data, a combination of BN and F344 strains should be good for estimating the mutation frequency for the mutagenesis experiments.