S. Armendares et al., UTILIZATION OF DIETARY ENERGY IN THE RAT .4. MULTIFACTORIAL INHERITANCE MODULATED BY GENDER, Archives of medical research, 26, 1995, pp. 145-148
In Wister rats the conversion indexes (CIs) are normally distributed,
A conversion index is the amount of food consumed necessary to increas
e the body weight by 1 g in a 32-day period, which begins at weaning (
day 21) and ends on the 52nd day of life of the rat. Some experiments
have been designed trying to demonstrate that inheritance of energy di
etary utilization in Wistar rats may be multifactorial modulated by ge
nder, In the study presented here parental males (F1) with CIs below t
he male median were paired with females of the same F1 who also had CI
s below the female median, It was postulated, if the hypothesis is cor
rect, that the offspring (F2) obtained from these pairings would have
conversion indexes below the median of the CIs of the parental rats (F
1), The results indicate precisely that both males and females behave
as expected, Thus it appears that inheritance of efficiency of dietary
energy utilization in the Wistar rat is a multifactorial trait.