Another source for evidence of genetic correlation between hormone release by alcohol and genetic tendencies toward drinking or withdrawal is the BXD recombinant inbred (RI) strains of mice. This panel of strains was developed for gene mapping from the intercrosses of C57BL/6J and DBA/2J inbred strains, and have been tested for acute (Belknap et al. 1993b) and chronic (Crabbe 1998) withdrawal severity and preference for 10% alcohol in the two-bottle choice test (Phillips et al. 1994). Data are archived on Gene Network (www.genenetwork.org). These strains have also been tested for corticosterone levels at several time-points after different doses of alcohol (Roberts et al. 1995). However, when we examined the correlations of strain means, neither two bottle preference drinking nor withdrawal severity were significantly correlated with any corticosterone response measures, across 17-25 strains (*r*< 0.33). Finally, we searched for similar data from standard inbred strains of mice. The only substantial strain survey we could find was an old study from the laboratory of Donald Keith (Crabbe et al. 1983) that assessed resting pituitary beta-endorphin levels in 10 inbred strains that were
