The development of these data and the genome-wide correlations to brain gene expression will complement gene-at-a-time approaches to addiction through the nomination of new candidate genes and the detection of multiple interacting QTL for certain traits. The phenotype-to-gene results generated from this study will aid the Knockout Mouse Project (Austin et al. 2004) by allowing prospective identification of the behavioral phenotypes most likely to be informative in studies of a given knock-out gene, and will therefore be useful in efforts to guide the intelligent use of costly live mouse derivation and extensive phenotyping. Further, they will become part of the foundation for deeper systems genetic analyses of drug abuse in the BXD RI lines.
