Biobreeding rat

Rat

Rats are various medium-sized, long-tailed rodents of the superfamily Muroidea. "True rats" are members of the genus Rattus, the most important of which to humans are the black rat, Rattus rattus, and the brown rat, Rattus norvegicus...

also known as the BB or BBDP rat is an inbred laboratory rat

Laboratory rat

A laboratory rat is a rat of the species Rattus norvegicus which is bred and kept for scientific research. Laboratory rats have served as an important animal model for research in psychology, medicine, and other fields.- Origins :...

 strain that spontaneously develops autoimmune Type 1 Diabetes. Like the NOD mice

NOD mice

Non-obese diabetic or NOD mice, like the Biobreeding rat, are used as an animal model for type 1 diabetes.- History :Non-obese diabetic mice exhibit a susceptibility to spontaneous development of autoimmune insulin dependent diabetes mellitus...

, BB rats are used as an animal model

Animal model

An animal model is a living, non-human animal used during the research and investigation of human disease, for the purpose of better understanding the disease without the added risk of causing harm to an actual human being during the process...

 for Type 1 diabetes. The strain re-capitulates many of the features of human type 1 diabetes, and has contributed greatly to the research of T1D pathogenesis.

Two genes have been identified - the MHC Class II gene and Gimap5, causing a severe T cell lymphopenia. Recently, 8 further loci on rat chromosomes 1,2,3,6 (2 loci), 12 and 14 have been shown to be linked to Type 1 Diabetes in the BB rat.