Chapter 21 - Integrating Biology with Rat Genomic Tools

Abstract

A number of valuable rat genetic resources have been developed over the past several years. The National Institutes of Health funded the Rat Genome Database (RGD) to collect, consolidate, and integrate data generated from ongoing rat genetic and genomic research efforts and make the data widely available to the scientific community. RGD provides information to inbred rat strains, genetic maps and markers, and mapping tools and also contains curated information on rat quantitative trait loci for different phenotypes, a genome browser, and a dynamic homology tool to compare rat genetic data to the homologous regions in mouse and human. These and other bioinformatics tools allow researchers to attach biological data to the rat genome. There are other sources also available to the research community that provides additional information on rat genetics and genomics. Genome browsers, such as ENSEMBL and the ones from University of California Santa Cruz and the National Center for Biotechnology Information, integrate genomic information from RGD with gene prediction tools and links to other databases and resources for gene expression and annotation, among others. Some other achievements in rat genomics in the past several years include the development of consomic rat strains, recombinant inbred strains, numerous congenics, and the assembly and publication of the rat genome sequence. With these and other genetic tools in hand, in future one can expect to see a substantial increase in the identification of genes underlying complex rat phenotypes, and their link to human diseases.