RECOMBINANT INBRED AND CONGENIC STRAINS FOR MAPPING OF GENES THAT ARERESPONSIBLE FOR SPONTANEOUS HYPERTENSION AND OTHER RISK-FACTORS OF CARDIOVASCULAR-DISEASE

The spontaneously hypertensive rat (SHR) is the most widely used anima l model of human essential hypertension, In the SHR strain, as in huma ns, the high blood pressure is determined multifactorially, Analysis o f genetically segregating populations, derived from SHR and normotensi ve inbred strains, enabled localization of quantitative trait loci (QT Ls) responsible for blood pressure regulation on several rat chromosom es, Analysis of specialized strains, congenic arid recombinant inbred (RI) strains, helped to analyze some of these mapping results in detai l: (1) analysis of congenic strains provided definitive evidence for t he presence of blood pressure regulatory genes on chromosomes 8 and 13 and will enable mapping of responsible genes to limited segments of d ifferential chromosomes, (2) the RI strains were shown to be especiall y useful for genome scanning studies of complex traits and for correla tion analysis of blood pressure and other risk factors of cardiovascul ar disease such as cardiac hypertrophy, dyslipidemia, and Insulin resi stance.