Once the gene location is found, researchers can look on the genetic maps created by Celera, Inc., to find the gene sequences, and through Nadeau ™s previous research, they can find the human genes that correspond to the mouse genes.

The more genes we know about, the more potential candidates there are for drug targets to treat the disease, Nadeau says.

Eric Topol, M.D., chairman of the cardiovascular medicine department at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and not an author on the paper, says, This is phenomenal work that will undoubtedly have a major impact in understanding the next frontier of human diseases “the complex traits, such as obesity, metabolic syndrome, or coronary heart disease. With whole chromosome substitution, Dr. Nadeau and colleagues have set a new standard for the use of models to fully dissect human traits and disease. This is one of the most important and impressive body of work to have been done to date to unravel the genes underpinning complex disease.

Nadeau ™s lab is making the mice available to other labs for research as a community service. The study occurred over seven years using 17,000 mice. Through the knowledge gained, the time can be cut by three years to produce new strains, which Nadeau believes is a better interval than other methods for discovering complex disease genes. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.