Inbred Strains
of Rats: WOKA
Inbr. (1998) F35+
Colour: Albino
Genet. c
Origin: Outbred Wistar BB rats from Biobreeding Laboratories, Ottawa,
Canada in 1981 to Dr. I. Kloting, Dept. of Laboratory Animal Science,
Inst. of Pathology, University of Greifswald, D-17495, Karlsburg, Germany.
WOKA (originally designated WOK.1A) was developed by brother x sister
mating from rats homozygous for RT1a, and WOKW (originally
designated WOK.1W) from rats homozygous for RT1U , a haplotype
which pre-disposes to type I diabetes.
Characteristics
No diabetes is observed in either strain. However, WOKW is hypertriglycemic,
hyperinsulinemic and hypertensive with impaired glucose tolerance which
increases with age, but it is normoglycemic and is not obese. It has a
poor reproductive performance. It may be a good animal model of human
insulin resistance (
Kovacs et al, 1997).
Both strains have been characterised at a number of genetic marker loci,
and differed from each other at 6/30 loci (
Bender
et al, 1994). They have also been compared with three other BB substrains
using 36 markers, and differ substantially both from the other strains
and from each other (
Kloting et al, 1995).
Bender
K., Balogh P., Bertrand M. F., den Bieman M., von Deimling O., Eghtessadi
S., Gutman G. A., Hedrich H. J., Hunt S. V., Kluge R., Matsumoto K., Moralejo
D. H., Nagel N., Portal A., Prokop C.-M., Siebert R. T., and van Zutphen
L. F. M. (1994) Genetic characterization of inbred strains of the rat
(Rattus norvegicus). J. Exp. Anim. Sci. 36, 151-165.
Kloting
I., Voigt B., and Vogt L. (1995) Molecular analysis of diabetes-prone
BB rat sublines and derivatives of their common ancestor as a tool to
search for candidate loci causing different phenotypes in BB rats. Diabet.
Res. 29, 65-71.
Kovacs
P., Voigt B., Berg S., Vogt L., and Kloting I. (1997) WOK.1W rats: A potential
animal model of the insulin resistance syndrome. Ann. NY Acad. Sci.
827, 94-100.
INBRED STRAINS OF RATS
Updated 9 Apr. 1998
Michael FW
Festing
MRC Toxicology Unit, Hodgkin Building,
University of Leicester,
UK
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