Differences between MOLF/Ei, MOLD/Rk and MOLG/Dn
JAX® NOTES Issue 456, Winter 1994
Muriel T. Davisson, Ph.D., Senior Staff Scientist
Origin
MOLF/Ei, MOLD/Rk and MOLF/Dn are inbred strains derived from the subspecies Mus musculus molossinus. M. m. molossinus from Dr. Michael Potter's colony were imported into The Jackson Laboratory by Drs. Eva M. Eicher and Thomas H. Roderick. All inbred strains at the Laboratory are derived from a single pair of mice said to be "within one to three generations" removed from capture in wild populations. MOLF/Ei and MOLD/Rk were inbred independently from the original pair. MOLG/Dn was separated from a third, now extinct strain, MOLC/Rk, also from the original imported pair. Despite the common origin, the original pair was not inbred and could have been segregating for alleles at many loci. Thus, these three strains may carry different alleles at the same locus and an allele of a particular locus typed in one strain should not be assumed to be the same allele carried by the other two strains. Information for each strain on the alleles for the loci that have been typed is available from the on-line electronic database GBASE.
We are encouraging the use of MOLF/Ei because this is the primary M. m. molossinus strain maintained in the Mouse Mutant Resource. The MOLG/Dn strain differs from the other two strains in that it has a duplication of the heterochromatin Cband near the centromere of Chromosome 2, which provides a cytological marker for gene mapping of proximal Chromosome 2. MOLD/Rk is a small colony, which we plan to remove from the breeding colony as soon as the strain is successfully preserved as frozen embryos.
