The polyphyletic origin of laboratory inbred mice and their rate of evolution

Abstract

The analysis of various genetic components in the standard inbred laboratory strains of mice shows that several taxonomic units of the complex species Mus musculus have contributed to their genetic background. These laboratory lines are often taken as archetypes of the mammalian genome and since their genealogy is known for around 80 years they have been used to estimate mutation rates and various other evolutionary parameters. The knowledge of their origins is important if one is to avoid erroneous interpretations. Do they possess haplotypes that could have existed in natural populations of M. musculus domesticus or are they the fruit of artificial recombinations between divergent genomes? We discuss this in the light of various genetic systems.

The mosaic structure of variation in the laboratory mouse genome

“…Here, we have compared the entire human chromosome 21 with syntenic regions of the mouse genome, and have identified a large number of conserved blocks of unknown function. Although previous studies have made similar observations 6,7 , it is unknown whether these conserved sequences are genes or not. Here we present an extensive experimental and computational analysis of human chromosome 21 in an effort to assign function to sequences conserved between human chromosome 21 (ref.…”

“…The genomes of these strains were predicted to be a 'mosaic' of regions with origins in the different subspecies 7 , but a clear description of this variation has remained elusive, largely owing to a lack of high-resolution data across the genome. Here, we describe the fine structure of variation among inbred laboratory strains, first through an analysis of available finished sequence and then through more comprehensive analysis of genome-wide shotgun SNP discovery data produced by the Mouse Genome Sequencing Consortium 3 .…”

Mosaic genealogy of the Mus musculus genome revealed by 21 nuclear genes from its three subspecies

“…The wild-derived strains were captured from different localities over the world (Table 1), and have been established as inbred strains in the National Institute of Genetics for more than 20 generations (Koide et al, 2000). All of these strains except C57/10J (B10) are wild-derived and the origin is controlled in contrast to some "old inbred" lines whose multiple origin is suspected (Bonhomme et al, 1987). Two M. m. musculus strains (BLG2 and NJL) originated near the well-studied hybrid zone between M. m. musculus and M. m. domesticus in Europe (reviewed in Sage et al, 1993).…”

Disruption of Genetic Interaction Between Two Autosomal Regions and the X Chromosome Causes Reproductive Isolation Between Mouse Strains Derived From Different Subspecies

“…It is thought that commonly used laboratory strains were derived predominantly from the M. m. domesticus subspecies, which is indigenous to Western Europe and the Mediterranean basin, with some small contributions from Asian subspecies, mostly M. m. musculus (Ferris 1982;Bishop et al 1985;Bonhomme et al 1987;Yonekawa et al 1988;Moriwaki 1994;Sakai et al 2005), whose range extends through northern Asia and eastern Europe. Hybrid sterility has been experimentally observed in intersubspecific crosses between M. m. domesticus and M. m. musculus (Forejt and Ivanyi 1975;Forejt et al 1991;Trachtulec et al 1997;Storchová et al 2004;Britton-Davidian et al 2005;Vyskočilová et al 2005), as well as interspecific crosses between M. musculus and M. spretus (Guénet et al 1990;Pilder et al 1991Pilder et al , 1993Pilder et al , 1997Pilder 1997;Elliott et al 2001).…”