RECOMBINANT INBRED STRAINS IN HYPERTENSION RESEARCH

It was recognized that recombinant inbred strains are a very powerful system for the study of the genetics of hypertension, linkage analysis and gene mapping. Such set of recombinant inbred strains has been dev eloped in the cooperation of Prof V. Kren and Dr. M. Pravenec in Pragu e. These recombinant inbred strains were used to search for the genes of spontaneous hypertension and to test the phenotypic differences. It was found that 1) the major histocompatibility compex of the rats sho wed a significant association with blood pressure, 2) the restriction fragment lenght polymorphism in kallikrein gene family as well as reni n gene cosegregated with blood pressure, 3) Na+ leak in red blood cell s cosegregated with blood pressure, 4) the relative heart and kidney w eights are not closely related to mean arterial pressure and 5) the pl atelet aggregation and blood pressure are independent traits. The resu lts indicate the usefulness of recombinant inbred strains in the analy sis of the relationship between phenotype and genotype.