Recombinant Congenic Strains

Abstract

Recombinant congenic (RC) strains are a tool that improves the efficiency of mapping of quantitative trait loci (QTLs). RC strains are homozygous and each contains a unique mixture of 87.5% of genes from its background strain parent and 12.5% of genes from its donor strain parent, thus dividing the donor strain’s genome into multiple compartments. F2 hybrids or backcrosses between an RC strain and its background strain contain only a limited set of segregating genes, and therefore have a high statistical power to map QTLs and detect their mutual gene–gene interactions.