Generation of congenic and consomic rat strains

Congenic and consomic rat strains are inbred strains containing in their genome a given genomic region (congenic) or a whole chromosome (consomic) from another strain. They are nowadays invaluable tools for the identification of genes and mechanisms of multifactorial diseases, one of the main goals in biomedicine. They are produced by repeated backcrosses from a donor inbred strain to a recipient inbred strain, and thereafter maintained by conventional brother-x-sister mating. Although their production is lengthy and costly, it only requires a zootechny unit for breeding and tools for genotyping.