Genetics of acute inflammation: inflammatory reactions in inbred lines of mice and in their interline crosses.

Abstract

Acute inflammation is induced by the subcutaneous injection of swollen polyacrylamide microbeads, its intensity measured by the cell and protein concentration of the local exudates. A large and continuous range of responses is obtained in different inbred strains of mice, which suggests a polygenic control of the inflammatory response. The variable levels of the global dominance observed in F1 hybrids issued from several parental combinations indicated that the pattern of alleles controlling high or low response was different in each parental strain. Balanced intercrossing of the 8 inbred strains studied has provided a genetically heterogeneous F3 population, presenting a high variability of responses. The value of the genetic part of F3 phenotypic variance, the spread of the interstrain differences, as well as the polygenic nature of the regulation of inflammatory responses pointed out the possibility to perform a bidirectional genetic selection by using the F3 mice as the foundation population, and response to microbeads as the selective phenotypic character.