Genetic Modulation of Protein Expression in Rat Brain

Genetic linkage analyses in rodents have unveiled numerous genomic loci contributing to a diverse array of traits, such as susceptibility to addictive behaviors and hypertension. To investigate the genetic basis of trait variation in rodents, genetic reference populations, such as the HXB/BXH recombinant inbred (RI) rat panel, have been extensively utilized. The HXB/BXH panel serves as a well-established rat model to dissect genetic variants that modulate metabolic and cardiovascular diseases. The panel has accumulated a wealth of comprehensive genotypic data, transcriptomic profiles, and phenotypic data, enabling integrative analyses to understand the pathway from genomic loci to traits. The parental strains of the HXB/BXH rat panel, SHR/OlaIpcv (SHR) and BN-Lx/Cub (BN-Lx) strains, have been completely sequenced, and sequence variants between them have been well-defined. Integrating genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics data from these two inbred strains, have successfully identified splice events, genetic variants, and RNA editing. However, there remains a lack of proteome-wide profiling across all 30 HXB/BXH RI strains, and the genetic regulation of protein expression remains largely unexplored.