There is a midline raphe joining the left and right halves dorsal to the rectum in Damaraland and silvery mole-rats (lines in LA below the rectum in Figure 4), but no dorsal raphe is seen in naked mole-rats.
Small variations were indeed seen in the expression of the traditional housekeeper genes (see Table 2), while the 4 selected invariant genes showed consistent expression across both rat lines and in both cohorts (see Figure 2 for examples).
Further analysis of the Mcs5 locus using WF.WKY congenic rat lines resulted in the identification of four subloci named Mcs5a1, Mcs5a2, Mcs5b and Mcs5c[ 9, 19].
Genetic fine-mapping using congenic recombinant rat lines resulted in the identification of three mammary carcinoma risk loci, one of which was Mcs5a [ 12, 13].
All transgenic rat lines generated in this project will be made available upon request to scientists at academic institutions for non-commercial research or deposited into a repository/stock centre, making them available to the broader research community.
Interestingly, the replicated rat lines also resulted in APO-UNSUS rats with three Aph-1b gene copy numbers and APO-SUS rats with only one or two gene copies (Coolen et al. 2005).
Differences in locomotor stimulation also have been seen in rat lines selected for drinking, with high-drinking lines being stimulated by lower doses than the low drinkers (Rodd et al. 2004).
However, an increasing demand for tissue-specific Cre-expressing rat lines can be anticipated in the near future, as the first successful gene targeting in rat embryonic stem cells was recently published [ 51] and several other tools for the targeted modification of the rat genome, such as zinc finger nucleases [ 11, 12] or transcription activator-like effectors [ 52], are emerging.
The present study was designed to examine the function of the μ-opioid receptor system in rat lines selectively bred for alcohol preference (AA [Alko, Alcohol] rat line) and alcohol avoidance (ANA [Alko, Non-Alcohol] rat line).
No statistically significant differences were found between the two EGFP-Ptetbi-luc lines used, confirming that both rat lines show equal efficacy in reporting Ptet-controlled gene activation.
