Resource
Heterogeneous Stock (HS) Rats
The center’s studies use heterogeneous stock (HS) rats, an outbred population descended from eight inbred founder strains. After nearly 100 generations of outbreeding, HS rats carry broad, well-characterized genetic diversity, a laboratory population that mirrors the genetic variability of humans far better than any single inbred strain.
This diversity is what makes individual-differences research possible: within any HS cohort, some animals develop compulsive, addiction-like drug use while most do not, just as in human populations. Because every animal can be genotyped or whole-genome sequenced, behavioral vulnerability can be linked directly to genetic variation through genome-wide association studies.
HS rats also connect PARC to national resources, including the RATTACA program, which provides rats with predicted trait values based on genotype, allowing investigators to prospectively select animals with predicted high or low addiction vulnerability.
For the behavioral phenotyping pipeline applied to these animals, see Behavioral Models. For samples from behaviorally characterized, whole-genome-sequenced HS rats, see the Addiction Biobank.