QTL mapping of murine hepatocellular damage in vivo and in vitro delineates two candidate genes within a 6 megabase locus on chromosome 11

Aims: Over the past two decades diverse molecular mechanisms of fibrogenesis have been identified. There is however still a substantial amount of unknown contributors, indicated by the so-called „missing heritability“, i.e. the lack of predictive value using known genetic risk factors. The aim of our study was to identify novel risk factors by dissecting genetic loci underlying differenzial susceptibility of hepatocytes to fibrosis-associated cytokine signalling. Methods: We performed two genome-wide quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping experiments: One in vitro experiment using cultured hepatocytes of BXD reco…