A team of scientists from the UNC-CH Department of Genetics and partnering institutions, led by Dr. Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena (Professor and Chair, UNC Genetics), published a policy article titled “Improve genetic quality control to increase rigor and reproducibility of mouse research” in the 14 May 2026 issue of Science.
The paper describes the development of an improved Strain GQC process that incorporates multiple samples per mouse strain, robust estimates of genome replicability, and a dashboard summary that classifies each strain into one of seven types based on clear metrics. Adoption of this enhanced GQC process will strengthen the value of animal models in biomedical research.