Biochemical genetic variants in mice selectively bred for sensitivity or resistance to ethanol-induced sedation

The distribution of biochemical genetic variants was examined among eight inbred strains of mice, which served as contributors to a heterogeneous stock of mice (HS), and in short-sleep (SS) and long-sleep (LS) mice, selectively bred from the HS stock for differential ethanol sensitivity. Fifteen loci for enzymes of alcohol and aldehyde metabolism, as well as 12 other biochemical loci, were investigated. Thirteen of these loci exhibited allelic variation between strains, of which six were separately fixed in the SS and LS mice. Comparisons of genetic similarity coefficients, based upon the distributions of allelic variants for the loci examined, with behavioural sensitivities (sleep-time) to an acute dose of ethanol for the inbred and selected strains of mice, indicated no correlations between these data. This suggests that this collective group of loci are not useful indicators of the genes selectively bred in the SS and LS strains, which are responsible for the differential sensitivities to acute doses of ethanol.