The Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics

SNP-based Genetic Maps of the Rat



Inbred strains of the laboratory rat have been extensively used to map genetic loci controlling complex disease traits and quantitative phenotypes. Although microsatellite-based maps of the rat have played a crucial role for detecting these loci, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) provide novel tools to understand the origin and structure of genetic variation in the rat and facilitate the identification of disease gene variants in rat strains.
This first release of the SNP-based map of the rat contains over 20,000 markers genotyped in a collection of 167 inbred strains from different colonies, recombinant inbred strains and hybrids from experimental crosses.
Publicly available data include SNP marker data typed in rat strains and SNP-based genetic maps.
Data can be searched for polymorphism information between multiple inbred strains and visualisation of putative haplotype conservation and divergence between multiple strains using the
rat SNP selector system.
Further detailed analyses of SNP data, including data integration in the rat genome assembly and other tools, is available through Ensembl.
Further analysis of functional SNP is available.
This project was originally funded by the specific targeted research project STAR under the Framework Programme 6 of the European Union. Ongoing work is funded by the integrated project EURATools under the Framework Programme 6 of the European Union.


  • Reference

  • The STAR Consortium. SNP and haplotype mapping for genetic analysis in the rat .
    Nature Genetics 40, 560 - 566 (2008)

    1. The Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, Oxford, UK
    2. Max-Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, Berlin, Germany.
    3. European Bioinformatics Institute, Cambridge,UK.
    4. Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique, Institut de Génomique, Centre National de Génotypage, Evry, France.
    5. Department of Bioinformatics, and Functional Genomics Node, Centro de Investigación Príncipe Felipe, Valencia, Spain.
    6. Hubrecht Institute, Utrecht, The Netherlands.

    Please direct enquiries to: Prof. Dominique Gauguier ,
    The Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, Roosevelt Drive, Oxford OX3 7BN, UK


    January 2008