Inbred strain

Inbred strains (also called inbred lines, or for animals linear animals) are individuals of a particular species which are nearly identical to each other in genotype due to long inbreeding. Inbred strains of animals are frequently used in laboratories for experiments where for reproducibility of conclusions all the test animals should be as similar as possible. However, for some experiments, genetic diversity in the test population may be desired. Thus outbred strains of most laboratory animals are also available.

Certain plants including the genetic model organism Arabidopsis thaliana naturally self pollinates, which makes it quite easy to create inbred strains in the laboratory (other plants, including important genetic models such as Maize require transfer of pollen from one flower to another). For most animals, the usual procedure is mating of brother-sister pairs for 20 generations which will result in lines that are roughly 98% genetically identical. For most purposes this is sufficient to be considered an inbred strain (compare to identical twins or clones which are 100% genetically identical).

See also:

• Inbred backcross lines
• Linebreeding
• Recombinant inbred strain

The most well-known lines of laboratory animals are:

Rats

• Wistar as a generic name for inbred strains such as Wistar-Kyoto, developed from the Wistar outbred strains
• Sprague-Dawley
• Long-Evans

Mice

• C57BL/6
• DBA/2
• BALB/c
• A/J
• C3H

Guinea pig

• Strain 2
• Strain 13