Embryonic stem (ES) cells have been used extensively for site-specific gene targeting in the mouse. The resulting knock-out and knock-in mouse models generated so far have demonstrated their usefulness in biomedical research. However, for many diseases and fields of study, the rat still re ...

The genetic dissection of physiological and pathological traits in laboratory model organisms is accelerated by the ability to engineer loss-of-function mutations at investigator-specified loci. This chapter describes the use of zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs) for the targeted ...

With the lack of tools available to manipulate the rat genome, alternative technologies have been investigated to generate loss-of-function rat models by gene invalidation. The recent demonstration that RNA interference (RNAi)-mediated gene silencing occurs in rodents has open ...

The field of toxicogenomics, which is becoming an important sub-discipline of toxicology, resulted from the natural convergence of the field of conventional toxicological research and the emergent field of functional genomics. One technology that has played a significant role in the ...

Congenic strains are routinely used for positional mapping of quantitative trait loci; while conplastic strains, derived by substitution of different mitochondrial genomes on the same nuclear genetic background of inbred rodent strains, provide a way to unambiguously isolate e ...

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 t ...

It is extremely useful to define a rapid and accurate method for identifying homozygous and heterozygous transgenic animals prior to setting up breeding programs for transgenic colonies and in experiments in which gene dosage effects could have a functional impact. Southern-blotti ...

Currently, most genetically engineered rat strains are created by methods that involve random integration of transgenes into the genome. The ability to identify the chromosomal location of the transgene insertion site enables the development of efficient genotyping assays, all ...

The rat evokes fear and disgust in a large percentage of people around the world. Yet, other people are fascinated by this amazing creature that is raised as a pet, has an important place in several religions, and is a prominent model for biomedical research. This book focuses on a variety of methodologies ...

The number of rat strains increased considerably in the last decade and will increase continuously during the next years. This requires enough space for maintaining vital strains and techniques for cryobanking, which can be applied not only in specialised rat ressource centres but also in r ...

Although in vitro and in vivo fertilization are powerful tools for restoring conserved sperm as well as stocked males in the rat, the techniques have progressively gained importance. However, the techniques are not used extensively for efficient production of rat offspring, because the t ...

More than 500 inbred rat strains have been developed during the past 100 years for a wide range of biomedical applications. In addition to these traditionally bred strains, many induced mutants and several thousand mutagenized sperm samples have recently been generated. At present this hu ...

Each translational approach in medical research forces the establishment of neurobehavioral screening systems, dedicated to fill the gap between postgenomic generation of state-of-the-art animal models (i.e. transgenic rats) on the one hand and their added value for really predi ...

LEW and BN rats, that behave in opposite ways for their susceptibility to various immune-mediated diseases, provide a powerful model to investigate the molecular and genetic bases of immune system physiology and dysregulation. Using this model, we addressed the question of the genetic co ...

Psychiatric diseases are very debilitating and some of them highly prevalent (e.g., depression or anxiety). The rat remains one model of choice in this discipline to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying normal and pathological traits. Genomic tools are now applied to identify ge ...

In cardiovascular research, the rat has been the main model of choice for decades. Experimental procedures were developed to generate cardiovascular disease states in this species, such as systemic and pulmonary hypertension, cardiac hypertrophy and failure, myocardial infarc ...

The spontaneously hypertensive rat (SHR) is the most widely used animal model of essential hypertension and accompanying metabolic disturbances. In this model, the use of whole genome sequencing and gene expression profiling techniques, linkage and correlation analyses in recom ...

Current understanding of the mechanisms underlying renal disease in humans is incomplete. Consequently, our ability to prevent the occurrence of renal disease or treat kidney disease once it develops is limited. There are objective difficulties in investigating kidney disease di ...

Genetic mapping and positional cloning of genetically complex traits in the laboratory rat (Rattus norvegicus) has recently led to the identification of various susceptibility genes in different rat models. Rat genetics has benefited from revolutionary advances in molecular bi ...

Rat has been the major model species used in several biomedical fields, notably in drug development and toxicology, including carcinogenicity testing. Rat is also a useful model in basic cancer research. Several rat models of monogenic (Mendelian) human hereditary cancers are availab ...