Last week, my review article “Fifteen years of the Diversity Outbred mouse model: a review” was published in Mammalian Genome. This paper provides a brief overview of the outbred mouse model, uses and considerations, and a catalog of published studies that used Diversity Outbred mice.
I’ll admit, I didn’t imagine this review being something that I would write and publish when I began to work on it. I was developing a project idea for my postdoc wherein I would conduct a mega-analysis of Diversity Outbred mouse studies on a trait with lots of publicly-available data, then compare the results with a mega-analysis of a similar trait in Heterogeneous Stock rats. Body weight was the trait I was thinking of, since it is pretty commonly measured in both animals. I just needed those data to be available.
So, my first step was to catalog Diversity Outbred mouse studies. What had been done before? How many animals? What were they studied for? Did they collect body weight? Did they collect genotypes? Could I find their raw data online?
This turned out to be very laborious, and a few months later I had an early precursor to Table 1. Dr. Palmer had the idea to publish this, to make it easier for anyone else who might want to know everything that’s out there and have it in one convenient spot.
Eventually, when it comes to my postdoctoral projects, I got pulled in a different direction. But I still hope this review (and the work it took to manually curate all those studies!) helps someone else.