Mouse genetics and metabolic mouse phenotyping.

The mouse is widely considered as a toolbox for modeling human diseases: mice are easy to handle and breed, there exist inbred strains, and the mouse genome sequence is available. Mutant mouse lines can be generated by different technologies, and standardized phenotyping of these mutant mouse lines produces a huge amount of valuable data. Useful resources for the scientific community are archives of mutant lines and strains as well as databases delivering information about the mouse lines and their availability. The phenotypic characterization of mutant mouse lines is the bottleneck within the pipeline from the generation via phenotyping to archiving of mutant mouse lines. Mouse clinics generate large data sets by the standardized, comprehensive phenotypic characterization of mutant mouse lines. There is a portfolio of phenotyping protocols available for a broad spectrum of disease areas that is considered as an international standard. For the investigation of human diseases like diabetes, obesity or the metabolic syndrome, metabolic tests to analyze mutant mouse lines become increasingly important. In this respect, challenge experiments have become the major focus to induce disease phenotypes in mutant mice that would remain undiscovered without the environmental challenges. These experimental setups reflect human conditions, where genetic predisposition and the environmental factors originating from different life style act together and enhance each other

Innovations in phenotyping of mouse models in the German Mouse Clinic.

Under the label of the German Mouse Clinic (GMC), a concept has been developed and implemented that allows the better understanding of human diseases on the pathophysiological and molecular level. This includes better understanding of the crosstalk between different organs, pleiotropy of genes, and the systemic impact of envirotypes and drugs. In the GMC, experts from various fields of mouse genetics and physiology, in close collaboration with clinicians, work side by side under one roof. The GMC is an open-access platform for the scientific community by providing phenotypic analysis in bilateral collaborations ("bottom-up projects") and as a partner and driver in international large-scale biology projects ("top-down projects"). Furthermore, technology development is a major topic in the GMC. Innovative techniques for primary and secondary screens are developed and implemented into the phenotyping pipelines (e.g., detection of volatile organic compounds, VOCs)