The Collaborative Cross, a project that aims to duplicate the diversity of human genetics in a lab mouse population, is currently focused in North Carolina.

Genetics play an important role in the most common diseases. As humans cannot be tested genetically in a lab environment, the Collaborative Cross is developing a strain of human genetics in mice. The goal is to ultimately fast-track important discoveries about genetics and disease into tests and treatments that will impact human health.

After a series of 15 essays were published in the Genetics Society of America, the Collaborative Cross set up at UNC Chapel Hill.

The project is led by Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villenaof the UNCdepartment of genetics, David Threadgill, a geneticist at North Carolina State University, and Gary Churchill of the Jackson Laboratory. The mice are being housed at UNC Chapel Hill.

Villena wrote one of the papers featured in Genetics. His paper provides the first comprehensive description of the mouse genome library.

The Collaborative Cross is a free resource for all scientists.

In a press release from UNC Health Care, Terry Magnuson, chair of genetics at UNC Chapel Hill and vice dean for research at the UNC School of Medicine, said, "Just as a museum curator is responsible for the heritage of art in their facility, our colleagues at UNC and NC State University are responsible for the heritage of the mice in the Collaborative Cross. As scientists use this resource to find ways to prevent and address the genetic changes that cause disease, findings in laboratory experiments should be much easier to translate to humans."

The Collaborative Cross project is also being used for studies on breast cancer.

Dr. Norman E. Sharpless, UNC Lineberger's associate director for translation research, said in a press release from UNC Health Care, "I expect that the results of this work will help human breast cancer patients. Huge consortia are successfully identifying regions of the genome associated with important human diseases like cancer and diabetes, but there are limitations in working with the human genome. The Collaborative Cross provides the best means to understand why certain genes are linked to certain diseases."

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Genetics study focused in North Carolina

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