A platform for experimental precision medicine: The extended BXD mouse family

The challenge of precision medicine is to model complex interactions among DNA variants, phenotypes, development, environments, and treatments. We address this challenge by expanding the BXD family of mice to 140 fully isogenic strains, creating a uniquely powerful model for precision medicine. This family segregates for 6 million common DNA variants—a level that exceeds many human populations. Because each member can be replicated, heritable traits can be mapped with high power and precision. Current BXD phenomes are unsurpassed in coverage and include much omics data and thousands of quantitative traits. BXDs can be extended by a single-generation cross to as many as 19,460 isogenic F1 progeny, and this extended BXD family is an effective platform for testing causal modeling and for predictive validation. BXDs are a unique core resource for the field of experimental precision medicine. •There are now 140 fully inbred BXD strains available, with high-quality genotypes•More strains, new genotypes, and new models have improved power and precision•We have high power even for traits with low heritability or small effect sizes•A phenome of >100 omics datasets and >7,500 classic phenotypes is freely available Ashbrook et al., have expanded the BXD family to 140 strains, providing a new tool for translational precision and predictive biology, and extended the usefulness of the deep phenome of >100 omics datasets and >7,500 classical phenotypes already available. They show increased precision and power by using new genotypes, updated models, and more strains.