Obesity is a complex trait, determined by many genes and influenced by environmental factors. Mapping genomic loci contributing to obesity helps to identify gene variants responsible for differences in the phenotype. However, measuring fat content alone is often not sufficient to identify the underlying gene or genes. Besides in-depth phenotyping, well-designed genetic populations and the combined analysis of data of different origins are necessary to detect one of several genetic determinants. Structured mouse populations and linking information from different experiments help to simplify the complexity in the search for direct genetic effects or factors that are hidden in the genome. In this chapter we present an example of how the physicochemical characterization of adipose tissue in BXD recombinant inbred lines contributes to enlighten the obese phenotype of mice. We describe the search for gene(s) contributing to collagen content in adipose tissue of BXD strains using the GeneNetwork platform.
Keywords: Adipose tissue; Collagen content; GeneNetwork; Recombinant inbred strains (RIS); Use case.