Submitted on December 6, 2006
Accepted on May 25, 2007
Identification of Positional Candidate Genes for Body Weight and Adiposity in Subcongenic Mice
Sally Chiu1, Kyoungmi Kim1, Kari A Haus1, Glenda M Espinal1, Lee V Millon2, and Craig H. Warden3*
1 Rowe Program in Genetics, University of California, Davis, Davis, California, United States
2 School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California, Davis, Davis, California, United States
3 Rowe Program in Genetics, University of California, Davis, Davis, California, United States; Section of Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior, University of California, Davis, Davis, California, United States
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: chwarden{at}ucdavis.edu.
We previously constructed a congenic mouse, B6.S-D2Mit194-D2Mit311 (B6.S-2) with 27 Mb of SPRET/Ei donor DNA on distal chromosome 2 in a C57BL/6J background that captured an obesity quantitative trait locus (QTL). Mice homozygous for SPRET/Ei alleles at the donor region had decreased body weight and obesity related phenotypes (7). In this study, we constructed five overlapping subcongenics with smaller SPRET/Ei donor regions to fine map the underlying gene(s). One of the five subcongenic lines derived from the B6.S-2 founding congenic, B6.S-2A, captured the body weight and adiposity phenotypes in a donor region with a maximum size of 7.4 Mb. Homozygous SPRET/Ei donor alleles in both the founding congenic and the derived B6.S-2A subcongenic exhibited significant decreases in body weight, multiple fat pad weights and Adiposity Index (total fat pad weight divided by body weight). Interval specific microarray analysis in four tissues for donor region genes from the founding B6.S-2 congenic identified several differentially expressed genes mapping to the B6.S-2A subcongenic donor region, including prohormone convertase 2 (PC2, gene name: Pcsk2). Quantitative real-time PCR confirmed a modest decrease of PC2 expression in brains of mice homozygous for SPRET/Ei donor alleles. Analysis of the relative levels of mRNA for B6 and SPRET/Ei in heterozygous congenic mice showed differentially higher expression of the C57BL/6J allele over the SPRET/Ei allele indicating a cis regulation of differential expression. Using subcongenic mapping, we successfully narrowed a body weight and obesity QTL interval and identified PC2 as a positional candidate gene.
