Genetical discussions for maintaining inbred strains have been reported many times, but there have been few papers concerning closed colonies of mice. To maintain a closed colony, it is important to consider two factors. The first is the increase of the inbreeding coefficient, which is related to changes in gene frequencies or changes in genetic components which affect biological reactions. If the inbreeding coefficient is increased, experimental results are changed with respect to those of previous experiments because of changes in the genetic constitution of the colony. The second factor is the occurence of subdivision in the colony. If a subdivision occurs in a colony, two groups of mice derived from different parts of the colony will have different genetic characteristics.
When we maintain a closed colony of mice, we must always know the degree of inbreeding and occurence of subdivisions, and try to prevent them as much as possible.
Two closed colonies, an ICR-JCL colony and a CF#1-JCL colony, were maintained in our Institute. These colonies have been maintained by a breeding system kown as the “rotation system for noninbred” consisting of three groups (A, B, C), as shown in Fig. 1. For example, the mating pairs in group A in a new generation are made up of virgin males and females supplied from group B and C, respectively, and so on. The ICR-JCL colony is maintained by breeding about 225 males and 1350 females, and the CF#1-JCL colouy by breeding about 50 males and 300 females in each generation.
In order to investigate the inbreeding coefficient and the index of subdivision in these colonies, 500 pairs from actual mating of a generation in the ICR-JCL colony and 200 pairs in the CF#1-JCL colony were sampled randomly (instead of sampling individuals from the progeny population) . The total inbreeding coefficien (F) and the inbreeding coefficient (F') from the inter-se relationship (R) were estimated by Wright and McPhee's method.
In the ICR-JCL colony, the total inbreeding coefficient (F) was estimated as 0.007 on two and half years and about six generations after we started to breed this colony ; and in the CF#1-JCL colony, it was estimated as 0.038 after two years and about five generations, as shown in Tables 1 and 2. The total inbreeding coefficient in the ICR-JCL colony was less than in the CF#1-JCL colony maintained with a smaller number of breeding individuals.
The inbreeding coefficient (F') from the interse relationship was estimated as 0.014 and 0.039 and the index of subdivision. (F/F') was 0.502 and 0.963 in the ICR-JCL and CF#1-JCL colonies, respectively. Since the values of the indices of subdivision are less than 1, no subdivision actually occurs in these colonies.
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