A timely, user-friendly, and flexible marker-assisted speed congenics method

Mice are the most widely used mammalian animal model worldwide. Their use presents many advantages, including our ability to manipulate their genome. Unfortunately, transgenic mice often need to be introgressed to transfer the transgene of interest in a specific mouse line. This time-consuming process can be shortened using the speed congenics technique. However, the need for a panel of informative markers to evaluate the proportion of donor and receiver genomes in different individuals produced at each generation hinders the utilisation of speed congenics. In this study, we present 255 microsatellites and 10 RFLPs which can be used in 18 marker panels, allowing the easy and fast introgression of genes of interest from three mouse lines commonly used for transgenesis (C57BL/6, 129/Sv and FVB) to six mouse lines relevant for biomedical research (BALB/c, C3H, DBA/1, DBA/2, SJL and SWR/J). In addition, our markers analysis confirmed a recently described lack of isogeny in well-established inbred mouse lines available from commercial breeders.