The "Mouse Obesity Gene Map" began as a bioinformatics student project, where Stefan Wuschke and Christian Schmidt (University of Applied Sciences Wildau) set up a database of mouse obesity genes and QTL for obesity-related traits. Because there were so many genes and QTL reported in the literature, the students started drawing physical gene maps that quickly evolved into very large, almost walkable posters. So eventually, Stefan programmed an interface to visualize the genetic loci in a more space saving way. Having the genetic coordinates for so many mouse QTL and candidate genes, the next obvious step was to meta-analyse the data and to find out whether certain "hot spots" for regulation of body weight and body composition exist in the genome. Apparently these consensus regions do exist. Thus the next round is open to explore these hot spots on the molecular level! We hope that you will find this website useful.

This work has been supported in part by the European Network on Functional Genomics of Type 2 Diabetes (EUGENE2) and the European Nutrigenomics Organisation (NuGO).

Hadi Al-Hasani, Ph.D.
German Institute for Human Nutrition
Potsdam-Rehbrücke
Arthur-Scheunert-Allee 114-116

14558 Nuthetal
Germany