Widely used in transplantation studies, often with the Lewis rat
Susceptible to experimentally induced arthritis
Also susceptible to the induction of autoimmune thyroiditis and experimental allergic encephalomyelitis.
Males exhibit a high incidence of bladder tumors and females exhibit a high incidence of hormone-dependent endometrial adenocarcinoma.
A white belly spot of a size of a quarter develops in the belly of ~30-40% of the population. Click the accordion "White Belly Spots" below for more information.
Origin:
The Dark Agouti inbred model was developed by the Agricultural Research Council Institute of Animal Physiology at Cambridge. Zentralinstitut für Versuchsteirzucht of Hannover Germany received stock. M&B A/S (now Taconic Europe) received stock in 1990. The rats were derived by embryo transfer in 2004 at Taconic US. The Taconic foundation colony was at F28 in 2005.
* Genetic monitoring of the foundation colony following derivation identified a mobility variant of Es2 and ongoing evaluation of this marker will continue.
n= 50 per sex at MPF health standard from US production colonies. Data collected 2012.
High and Low represent mean +/- 2 standard deviation. (For 3 week old rats the low is only -1 SD.) Based on sample size the charts above represents ~70% of the population.
All growth curves represent animals housed in our barriers, at our standard density and fed NIH31-M diet. Variations at customer facilities will alter expected growth curves.
Growth charts are provided only as a guide, if a specific weight criteria is needed please order animals by weight.
Customize this chart by clicking the legend elements, then explore download options by hovering your cursor over the down arrow to the right of the chart title.
Background about DA with White Belly Spots: The DA inbred rat has been bred at Taconic’s Germantown site since 2004. Since these colonies were established, it was observed that as part of the phenotype of this rat a white belly spot of a size of a quarter develops in the belly of ~30-40% of the population. This phenotypic trait is inherited in a non-Mendelian fashion; it is present in females and males and has incomplete penetrance. It is likely that this phenotype is a result of epigenetics. Several attempts have failed in breeding out this phenotype from the colony. As a precaution, animals with belly spots are not used as breeders. Customers that have used this model with belly spots have reported no issues with performance of belly spot rats compared to non-belly spot rats. This colony is genetically monitored by a 96 SNP Rat Panel, and all test results are genetically compliant.
