[Congenic rats for hypertension studies]

Abstract

A congenic rat has a small genomic fragment transferred from a donor strain into a recipient strain. It is therefore possible to make a hypertensive congenic strain with a single unknown hypertensive gene originating from a genetic hypertensive model rat such as SHR. Such a congenic strain is useful in the search for hypertension genes in rats. It can be applied (1) to further dissection of QTL regions, (2) to determination of the boundaries of QTL regions, which is necessary for selection of positional candidate genes, and (3) to physiological and biochemical studies to get intermediate phenotypes.