title: Genetic Relatedness of WNIN and WNIN/Ob with Major Rat Strains in Biomedical Research.
abstract: WNIN (Wistar/NIN) is an inbred rat strain maintained at National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) for more than 90 years, and WNIN/Ob is an obese mutant originated from it. To determine their genetic relatedness with major rat strains in biomedical research, they were genotyped at various marker loci. The recently identified markers for albino and hooded mutations which clustered all the known albino rats into a single lineage also included WNIN and WNIN/Ob rats. Genotyping using microsatellite DNA markers and phylogenetic analysis with 49 different rat strains suggested that WNIN shares a common ancestor with many Wistar originated strains. Fst estimates and Fischer's exact test suggest that WNIN rats differed significantly from all other strains tested. WNIN/Ob though shows hyper-leptinemia, like Zucker fatty rat, did not share the Zucker fatty rat mutation. The above analyses suggest WNIN as a highly differentiated rat strain and WNIN/Ob a novel obese mutant evolved from it.
authors.affiliation: Molecular Genetics Laboratory, National Centre for Laboratory Animal Science (NCLAS), National Institute of Nutrition (NIN), Tarnaka, Hyderabad, 500007, India.
authors.forename: Kiran Kumar
authors.initials: KK
authors.lastname: Battula
authors.forename: Giridharan
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Nappanveettil
authors.forename: Satoshi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nakanishi
authors.forename: Takashi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kuramoto
authors.forename: Jeffry M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Friedman
authors.forename: Rajender Rao
authors.initials: RR
authors.lastname: Kalashikam
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D035843:Biomedical Research; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D005838:Genotype; D008297:Male; D009765:Obesity / Q000235:genetics; D010802:Phylogeny; D051381:Rats; D011919:Rats, Inbred Strains / Q000235:genetics*; D011922:Rats, Mutant Strains / Q000235:genetics*; D017208:Rats, Wistar; D011924:Rats, Zucker