Genetically-Diverse Mice Improve Alzheimer's Research

A study published in Neuron found lab mice engineered to exhibit greater genetic diversity more accurately modeled the genetic, molecular, and clinical markers of people with Alzheimer's, reports Laboratory Equipment . The research was part of the Resilience-Alzheimer's Disease Consortium supported by the National Institute of Aging. The researchers bred a new strain of mice by crossing a well-established mouse model of familial Alzheimer's with a genetically diverse mouse strain. The offspring were genetically diverse while still carrying a high risk of Alzheimer's. The AD-BXD mouse strain more precisely modeled the genetic diversity observed in real-world populations of people with the disease, and also differed significantly in the development of pathologic and cognitive Alzheimer's symptoms. Furthermore, comparative analyses showed the C57BL/6J Alzheimer's mouse model retained resilience factors that mitigated the impact of Alzheimer's risk factor genes; this might help explain the difficulty of replicating the outcomes of research in C57BL/5J mice.