Recombinant congenic strains of mice from B10.D2 and DBA/2: their contribution to behavior genetic research and application to audiogenic seizures.

Recombinant congenic strains (RCS) represent a series of related strains, each of which carries a small fraction of the genome of one strain ("donor" strain) on the genetic background of another strain ("background" strain). Recombinant inbred strains (RIS) are commonly used to identify major gene segregation and linkage and associations between behavior and quantitative trait loci, whereas recombinant congenic strains (RCS) open other complementary leads. The variability in the reactivity of RCS to a trait is thus the expression of few minor-effect genes originating from the donor strain, because the probability that major genes are present in any one RCS is low. Unlike RIS in which minor-effect genes are often masked by major genes, RCS enable the effects of minor genes to be studied. With our method, for a given trait, an estimate can be made of the gene strength distribution as well as an estimate of the minimal number of genes involved having a certain strength.