It has been widely accepted that inbred strains of mice and other rodents should be used for experimental purposes because such strains are considered to show physiological uniformities with themselves. On the other hand, it has been questioned whether inbred strains of mice are indeed more suitable for experimental purposes. Emmens(1939)found an inbred strain of Strong's CBA mice to be more va...

Environmental changes may stress organisms and stimulate an adaptive phenotypic response. Effects of inbreeding often interact with the environment and can decrease fitness of inbred individuals exposed to stress more so than that of outbred individuals. Such an interaction may stem from a reduced ability of inbred individuals to respond plastically to environmental stress; however, this hypoth...

noise is considered as one of the most severe sources of environmental and work place constraints. noise effects on immune function, hormonal levels, cardiovascular and respiratory systems are well known. the aim of the study is to evaluate the effects of traffic noise on basal and stimulated gastric acid secretion. 48 healthy rats were divided into five traffic noise exposures (1, 7, 14, 21, 2...

There is mounting evidence that inbreeding can have detrimental effects on the fitness of outbred individuals that interact with or depend on inbred individuals. However, little is currently known about the behavioral mechanisms by which interactions with inbred individuals induce fitness costs in outbred individuals. Here, we study effects of inbreeding on the behavioral dynamics of biparental...

Use of variance-component estimation for mapping of quantitative-trait loci in humans is a subject of great current interest. When only trait values, not genotypic information, are considered, variance-component estimation can also be used to estimate heritability of a quantitative trait. Inbred pedigrees present special challenges for variance-component estimation. First, there are more varian...

In order to understand the effect of grain moisture of inbred lines at the silking and physiological maturity stages on kernel dehydration rate, 59 maize inbred lines from six subgroups were selected. Grain moisture was measured and QTLs associated with kernel dehydration were mapped. A rapid dehydration evaluation and association analysis revealed eight inbred lines with faster dehydration rat...

High-density SNP screening of panels of inbred mouse strains has been proposed as a method to accelerate the identification of genes associated with complex biomedical phenotypes. To evaluate the potential of these studies, a more detailed understanding of the fine structure of sequence variation across inbred mouse strains is needed. Here, we use high-density oligonucleotide arrays to discover...

The environment can influence heterosis, the phenomena in which the offspring of two inbred parents exhibits phenotypic performance beyond the inbred parents for specific traits. In this study we measured 25 traits in a set of 47 maize hybrids and their inbred parents grown in 16 different environments with varying levels of average productivity. By quantifying 25 vegetative and reproductive tr...