A LINKAGE MAP OF THE RAT GENOME DERIVED FROM 3 F2 CROSSES

We report the construction of a dense linkage map of the rat genome in tegrating 767 simple sequence length polymorphism markers, combined ov er three crosses with high rates of polymorphism, F-2 populations from WKY x S (n = 159), BN x S (n = 91), and BN x GK (n = 139) were select ed and genotyped for combinations of microsatellite markers. The loci define 21 linkage groups corresponding to the 20 rat autosomal chromos omes and the X chromosome. The map spans a genetic length of 1998 cM. This combined linkage map should facilitate the advancement of genetic studies for a wide variety of rat models characterized for complex ph enotypes.