This $1,423,418 federal Project Grant award, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (CFDA 93.279 - Drug Use and Addiction Research Programs), supports the establishment of the Center for Genetics, Genomics, and Epigenetics of Substance Use Disorders in Outbred Rats at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).
The primary goals of this 5-year grant, effective September 1, 2024, are to 1) maintain breeding colonies of outbred heterogeneous stock (HS) rats, 2) provide genotyping, genome-wide association, and transcriptome-wide analysis services, 3) manage a large database of over 15,000 deeply phenotyped and genotyped HS rats, and 4) support pilot projects and educational activities to expand the use of HS rats for studying the genetic basis of individual differences in substance use disorder vulnerability. Key services include the introduction of a novel predictive rat selection model called RatTaca, which allows non-geneticist researchers to study high and low phenotypes. This center aims to promote the use of outbred HS rats as a valuable platform for quantitative genetic studies on complex behavioral traits related to substance abuse.