The tendency of some rodents to prefer and others to avoid alcohol solutions has provided the cornerstone for behavioral neuroscience research into alcohol use disorders since its discovery more than 60 years ago. The early demonstration that those differences were in great part genetically based has led to the prominent role of behavioral genetics in preclinical research on alcohol. As genetics, genomics, and bioinformatics tools proliferated and grew markedly in sophistication, we have made substantial progress toward identifying some of the genes responsible for differential avidity for alcohol solutions. This has led to pursuit of some novel new drugs with potential therapeutic value. It has also become abundantly clear from studies of genes and their expression patterns how complex the genetic contributions to drinking are. Curiously, the phenotypes studied in rodents remain much the same as they were at the outset. In part, this is because alcoholism is a developmental, chronically relapsing disorder, and it is both difficult and expensive to model in the laboratory across the life span, even in rodents that typically live only 2–3 years. Also, we
